X-Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood
by Katie Trillion
Summary: The X-Men have seen many things in their time - both acts of selfless kindness to moments of deepest cruelty. Now, with the human race terrified of mutants, cases of abuse have emerged - starting with a teenage girl, living with her parents. Her little brother knows nothing about her, and he never will. She is a secret that her father has fought to hide - now, she will be known...
1. Chapter 1

X-Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

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Note: This is my first X-Men fanfiction so please don't judge. This is a sort of fuse between X-Men: Last Stand and X-Men: Apocalypse. I don't what the heck I'm doing as I haven't watched all the films yet, but enjoy the story!

Contains infrequent bad language.

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Chapter One: **Noises in the Roof**

* * *

_Scratch, scritch. Scratch. Tap… tap-tap-tap._

"What's that?" The blonde-haired girl looked up from the board. Poppy had come over to Mike's house earlier that morning, and she and Mike had been playing Monopoly for over an hour now, with Mike's mother as the banker.

"It's nothing," Mike answered, moving his dog-shaped piece six places to the right and groaning theatrically as he landed on one of Poppy's properties. Poppy gave him a look and he reluctantly handed over the required amount in brightly coloured paper money.

_Scratch, scratch._

The scratching from above them sounded again, nagging and insistent. Poppy looked up again as she moved her car-shaped piece. "Mike, is it rats? I _hate _rats."

Mike looked up as well. "Mum, we don't have rats, do we?"

His mother looked up. Her face was uncharacteristically pale. 'No, Michael, it's not rats. I… I'll have a look up there when Poppy's gone home."

Poppy grinned as she landed on 'Chance', and triumphantly picked up a card from the higgledy-piggledy pile that Mike had dropped on the place when the game had started.

"It's 'Get Out Of Jail Free'! I'm saving this one," she gloated.

"Just hurry up and give me the dice," Mike grumbled.

_Scratch, scratch. Scritch, scritch, scree- atch. _

_Tap… tap-tap… tap._

* * *

When the front door had closed behind the grinning Poppy (she'd won the game of Monopoly and would, no doubt, be gloating continuously to her mother all the long drive home), Mike's mother turned to him, smiled, and told him to go and sort out the table for dinner.

When Mike was safely out of earshot, she called up the stairs to her husband:

"Roland, dear, would you come down?"

The usual protests as he stopped working at his computer greeted her before her long-suffering husband made his way down the stairs.

"What is it, Helen?" he asked wearily.

Helen wrung her hands. "It's… you know… _her_ again."

Roland's face instantly hardened into an implacable, impassive mask. "You know what to tell Michael, Helen. It's… owls or crows or something. And that way, we are keeping the mind of our child pure."

Helen nodded, agreeing like she always did. She would go up to the attic tonight, she decided. She hadn't been up there in months.

It was only Roland who ventured to the attic with the thin whip he kept on top of the cabinet in his office.

"Go and make dinner, Helen." Roland said softly.

Helen retreated, still wringing her hands and, in her head, she was whimpering like a dog that had been kicked.

* * *

In the attic, something opened its eyes and hissed.

* * *

Roland brought the whip down.

"Bad – girl – you – don't – do – that – when – guests – are – here, do you?" With every word, he brought the whip down on the girl's back. She hissed, writhing, pulling against the ropes that were tight around her wrists. The thick leather-and-metal harness that was strapped across her back and chest strained and stretched as she writhed.

"_Stop – you – bastard –_" She hissed, trying to lash out at him. Roland struck her across the face with the whip and she reeled back, blood smeared across her features, obscuring them. She knew what to do now – if she faked unconsciousness, Roland would leave her alone and go back downstairs to help with dinner. She made her body go limp and her head loll against her chest. Roland half-snorted, muttering something about mutant weaklings. He crossed to the hatch, opened it, and left the attic via the folding ladder.

"Jay?" Helen. Her mother. She looked up as the hatch opened again. Helen looked as if she'd been crying.

Her mother untied her and let Jay fall to the floor. She was bruised, bloody, and exhausted. She often had trouble sleeping and was uncomfortable with the harness that Roland had forced on her when Jay's mutant ability had manifested; the harness had been rubbing recently as well, as she'd grown almost too large for it and Roland had ever taken it off, not even to replace or clean it.

'Mum – take – off – harness –" Jay managed to say, feeling the contraption tighten in response to her back flexing, sending pain lancing through her body. Helen scurried over to her and began struggling with the straps and buckles.

"I can't, Jay. I'm sorry – I think it needs a key."  
"A key?" Jay remembered seeing a shining jagged key swinging down from her father's neck as he bent down towards her. "He's got it."

"I know, darling, I'll try and get it off him, okay?" Helen touched her face, seeming a little scared. Jay cursed inside her head – everybody was scared of her except Mike, who wasn't even aware of her existence.

Jay smiled, rubbing her wrists. _Smile for your mother, _she thought, _smile like a good girl, smile to make her happy. _

"Thanks, mum."

Helen smiled back. "I'll get you dinner, Jay. Be back in an hour, so you get some rest while I'm gone."

Jay relaxed onto her little bed and felt the harness jarring against her shoulder blades and digging into her flesh. She couldn't relax, not properly, with that thing on her back, restraining her, trapping her.

_Hurry up with that key, Mum, _she thought, trying to feel calm. Somehow, much later, she managed to sleep.

* * *

Helen stayed up late, looking through her computer files. Then a notification popped up at one corner of the screen:

_Message from Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters – _Delete/Reply

Feeling like she was diving head-first into uncharted, dangerous waters, Helen clicked on the message.

It read as follows:

_Mrs Farley, _

_It has come to my attention that your daughter, Jay Farley, has a genetic mutation that is commonly know as the X-Gene, a most peculiar genetic phenomenon that all mutants possess. If it is agreeable to your household, I and a group of my students would like to visit your house in order to meet Miss Farley. If she wishes, she may take a place at Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters, although I will not be offended if she wishes to remain with her family. _

_Please send me the closest date available via the attached email address as well as an answer to my request. _

_Kind Regards, _

_Professor C. Xavier, Founder of Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters._

Helen slowly began to digest the contents of the message, the two impossible requests. Would Jay be able to escape the house once and for all? Would the fabled Professor Xavier come?

As quickly as possible, Helen typed a hasty reply, trying to explain that her husband would be at best apoplectic and at worst profoundly violent to be told this, and that she would try to arrange a day out for him and Mike so that the Professor and his students could visit in private. When she finally pressed return, Helen felt more defiant than she had ever had in her life.

* * *

"Bye dear!" Helen called as Mike and Roland got into the car the next morning, all ready to drive away for a few hours.

It was only a few minutes after they had backed out of the drive when she heard the smooth wheels of a wheelchair on the pavement, followed by several pairs of footsteps coming down the road.

The professor had arrived, along with Logan, Scott, Ororo, and Jean. Hank McCoy also followed them, his blue skin and hair instantly recognisable. The little group were better known as Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm and Beast, as Jean did not have a professional name.

"Come in," Helen said, flustered, not sure how to act. She hurriedly opened the door wide so that Charles's chair could get through. Ororo and Jean smiled at her while Scott and Hank offered respectful nods.

They settled themselves in the living room and, as soon as they had all sat down and Helen had offered them tea (which they'd accepted), Charles spoke.

"Mrs Farley, I am Charles Xavier, and these are my colleagues and students: Jean, Scott, Ororo, Logan, and my old friend Doctor Hank McCoy." He gestured to each person as he mentioned their names.

Helen nodded, her mug of tea trembling in her hand. "I-I'm Helen."

Ororo gave her a warm smile and Helen partly relaxed.

"And where is the child?" Charles asked. "I was expecting her to be waiting."

Helen' hands began the familiar routine of wringing. "Ah, that may be, ah, a small problem. You see… she's… upstairs."

Charles swore under his breath. Since the loss of the use of his legs, stairs had been a particular nemesis of his. Scott helped him up and Jean carefully lifted him through the opened hatch using her telekinetic ability.

_Please come up, _the Professor told them, shock clear in his thoughts even though he was attempting to keep calm. Gingerly, Jean made her way up the ladder first, then Ororo, Scott, Hank, and finally Logan, who had been his usual brooding self for the past week.

"Oh, God above," Jean whispered. "What has he done to her?" The others piled into the attic space to see what her exclamation had been caused by.

Jay was sitting on her bed, wearing a grey hoodie with the hood pulled up to obscure her features with shadow. Her back was oddly hunched and seemed to have more of a hump that was normal.

"Jay?" Helen said tentatively. The girl raised her head but didn't lower her hood, meaning she was distrustful, wary, like a predator trapped in a cage.

Her eyes were sunk deep in her sockets and glowed a soft amber colour in the monochrome light that nervously crept through the dirt-caked windows of the attic. Her pupils were a little like a cat's, although not too much to be entirely noticeable.

She held Charles's stare for what seemed like a century.

"Have you come to get rid of me?" she whispered finally. Jay didn't sound scared or angry, just resigned.

Charles inched forwards; was he nervous? "No, Jay. We're from a school."

Jay laughed bitterly. "You're lying."

_I am not lying. _Jay gasped as Charles spoke inside her head. _Jay. Can you answer this for me? Do you trust me? _

"I –"

_Think your answer and I will hear it. _

_I've learnt not to trust anyone much. Apart from Mum, and I've never met Mike. My brother, you know._

"Thank you, Jay," Charles reverted to speaking with such suddenness that Jay jerked in surprise. Charles continued:

"My school is for people like you, people who are gifted. There, they learn not only to use their abilities, but to control them as well, and that's the most important thing about us. If we lose control, we lose everything. Jay. I know that you've been through a lot -" Jay raised an eyebrow.

"A lot?" She interrupted. "You mean my father has put this –" she shifted her back, "on me, and whipped me and beaten me and locked me away from the world, and that's only _a lot_?"

Charles looked at her with melancholy, understanding and concerned eyes. "Jay, you are not the only one who had been abused because of their ability."

"I know. But it still hurts."

Charles nodded. "I understand. It may stop in time, though."

Jay shifted again, her hands fisted at her sides then coming together in her lap and mimicking Helen's trademark wringing motion. "You mean if I come to this… school of yours."

Charles nodded again. "Please, Jay. You'll be happier there."

Jay stood up abruptly, although her back was still hunched over a little. "I'll come. Just let me pack a few things. Some books and stuff."

"Of course."

Helen scurried up to her daughter, holding out a small backpack. Jay shoved a couple of books into it, along with a few pencils, paints, and a sketchbook, and a few clothes.

"There," she said. "I'm ready to leave."

She held the bag in one hand instead of hoisting it onto her back as she followed Charles, Jean, Scott, Ororo, Logan and Hank back downstairs, Charles with the help of Jean again.

Ororo took the girl's hand as she stumbled on the ladder, then helped them down with a gust of wind and set them gently on the floor as the remainder of the outlandish weather pattern dissipated.

Jay was smiling for the first time in years. "Thanks, Ororo," she said, wanting to scramble up the ladder again and come back down just to enjoy the feeling of half-falling and half-flying all over again.

* * *

Helen stood at the front door as she watched her daughter leaving. She was both smiling and tearful, clutching a tissue in one hand as the camouflaged jet faded into the visible spectrum in front of her.

Looking rather nervous, Jay climbed inside. She had never flown before, and had never actually seen even a plane before.

"Ororo," she whispered, "We are going to the school, right?"

Ororo smiled. "You'll see, little one. Just don't be sick on the flight."

Jay gasped and clung to her seat as the jet lifted into the air under Ororo's careful guidance.

"It's fine, kid," Logan muttered from the seat across from her. "We'll be up in a sec and it'll be fine."

"Uh-huh," Jay said, still clinging to the arms of her seat. She hadn't taken down her hood yet, so only her amber-coloured eyes were visible.

"As much as I'm probably going to regret this later," Jean told her from the seat next to Jay, "trust Logan. It's fine."

Jay was still hunched up in her seat, restrained by the harness and the seatbelt that Jean had fastened for her. "Uh-huh," she muttered again. "So what's the school like?"

"Any other secondary school, except more dangerous," Jean laughed.

"I've never been to secondary school," Jay said nervously. "Is that bad?"

Everybody went very quiet. They hadn't suspected for a moment that Jay had been incarcerated in the attic for _that_ long.

"You can read and write, can't you, Jay?" Jay nodded. "And you're good at art?" Jean asked.

"Yes. But I'm not so good at maths. Terrible, in fact." Jay laughed ruefully. "And not because I haven't practised, I have, I'm just terrible at it."

"We can fix that," Jean reassured her. "Lessons are just a few of the things we do at school."

"Will Mr Xavier help me?" Jay asked. "I mean… will he help me out of my harness? It needs a key and my dad's got it."

"That'll be easy for Jean, kid," Logan said, "She'll rip that apart key or no key."

Jay smiled, showing teeth that were slightly crooked, raised her hands and took her hood down.

All of the mutants around her were used to the many and varied faces of the mutant community, but little changes in their expressions nevertheless signified surprise at Jay's appearance.

Jay's skin had a suggestion of scales to it and it was tinged deep crimson around the edges of her face; she didn't have noticeably high cheekbones, as they were probably exaggerated due to the hollowness of her cheeks. Other than the red, her skin was light brown. Her hair was straight and an unremarkable dark brown, dyed with a single red streak and cut so that it brushed her shoulders, which were hunched over from the weight on her back. Her ears tapered to slight points.

Logan and Scott tried not to stare. Jay was pretty, not overly so, not compared to Mystique or Pixie or Storm, but still pretty. The slightly pointed ears were strangely endearing, and made her seem younger.

Jay crossed her arms, and winced as her fingers brushed the network of harness straps that laced tightly across her chest. The straps, both across her chest and back, had been tight enough to cut into her for a while now, and were beginning to create deep blue-and-black bruising.

"Jay…" Jean whispered. She'd seen the jerking movements of Jay's shoulders, the hunched shape of her back, and, coupled with the harness, that could only mean one thing. Jean felt white-hot anger rising like a phoenix inside her – even she hadn't imagined anything like this – depriving one of one's own ability.

"Tell Ororo to speed up, Jean," Charles told her. "We need to get that thing off Jay as soon as possible."

* * *

Hank and Jean were examining Jay in the lab. They'd taken a blood sample and had then let the girl ask her bottled-up questions, of which there weren't many. First:

"Are you going to get this thing off me or not?"

"Fine, fine," Hank said, still analysing the results of the tests that he'd run on Jay's blood sample. "You've waited long enough."

Jean concentrated.

The metal and leather burst apart, the straps disintegrating, the metal hissing as it heated up beyond tolerance. Jean had been expecting the girl's wings to unfold in the dramatic way that Warren's had, but they didn't.

Jay slowly straightened up. "What do they look like?" she whispered, meaning her wings.

Jean and Hank looked – Jean gasped and Hank swore under his breath. Jay's wings had once been dragon-like, but were now creased, twisted, almost deformed, having been restrained and forced inside a too-small harness for years. Bruising and scars littered the skin and the veins lacing through it, and several bones all through the wings had been dislocated and possibly broken.

"That's not going to heal." The sentence slipped out of Hank's mouth before he could stop it.

Jay nodded, resigned. She wouldn't cry, not yet. "Thought so." She reached over her shoulder, feeling the ruined muscle and skin, touching the bones and wincing as her fingers brushed the mottled blue-black bruising.

Suddenly a young girl walked through the wall, giggling hysterically. She had wavy brown hair, brown eyes, and was wearing jeans and a T-shirt. Kitty Pryde looked around the room, realised what was happening, and the flood of giggles stopped almost immediately mid-laugh.

"Oh! Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't know –" Kitty's hurried apology was cut short as she saw the damage to Jay's wings. "What happened?"

Jean introduced them. Kitty tentatively stepped forwards and touched the scarred skin and flesh with trembling fingers. Jay winced, turned and grabbed the girl's wrist with incredible speed, throwing Kitty against the wall with such force that Kitty didn't have time to phase through it and instead slumped against it, unconscious.

"Don't touch me," Jay hissed. "Nobody touches my wings."

"Calm down, Jay," Jean said, not daring to come near the girl. Hank bent over Kitty, checking the girl's pulse and the swelling lump on the back of Kitty's skull.

"She'll have a concussion, but no serious damage. It seems that you are stronger than you look, young lady."

"But I'm nothing without my wings. What's the point of a mutation like mine when it's been ruined like this?"

Hank stopped examining Kitty, given that the girl was in a stable condition, turning to Jay. " We just need to find a mutant with the ability to heal you."

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**First chapter up! I hope you liked it, and thankyou for reading! Please ****review! Katie Trillion xx**


	2. Chapter 2

X-Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

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**Note: **I made up some places in the School for the storyline – they might exist in the films or comics, I don't know. Some you'll recognise, even though I've messed around with the timelines a bit. I've also invented a couple of mutants, although most are faithful to the comics and films.

Contains infrequent bad language (five or so instances).

* * *

The little girl she said to me  
What are these things that I can see?  
Each night when I come home from school  
And mama calls me in for tea

Oh every night a baby dies  
And every night a mama cries  
What makes those men do what they do  
To make that person black and blue?

Tell me there's a heaven  
Tell me that it's true  
Tell me there's a reason  
Why I'm seeing what I do

Tell me there's a heaven  
Where all those people go  
Tell me they're all happy now  
Papa tell me that it's so

_Tell Me There's a Heaven, _by Chris Rea

* * *

Chapter Two: **Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters**

* * *

Jay hadn't slept, despite the fact that she'd been assigned to a room with a large bed, a shelf for her books, a cupboard for her few clothes, and a wide mullioned window that showed the rainbow expanse of the gardens, which slowly dulled and became dark as night dragged its dark hands over the school grounds.

She'd tossed and turned for a while, her back aching, bruises in every colour under the sun converging on her back, arms, and across her face, leaving her with a black eye blooming like a purple flower over her eye and spreading down her cheek.

Eventually she sat up, flicked on the light next to her bed, and began to read. Her eyes skipped over the words, like a rock skipping over water, ripples of imagined images and the black words spreading out around her, immersing her in their pages. As she read, Jay wondered why bits of pulverized trees and scrawls of ink could inspire such reactions in people.

She read until she fell asleep, still sitting up, her head lolling to one side. When she was sleeping, she looked almost vulnerable, unhardened by what her father had done to her.

The breeze from the window pushed aside the curtains, making them whisper against the walls, and it slithered from the window and through the room, caressing her cheek and the side of her neck, the silvery moonlight swiftly following. The light painted her features an otherworldly white as the light travelled down her sleeping form, its pale fingers cold and lingering.

Jay shifted, murmuring under her breath, her eyelids fluttering like trapped butterflies as she was gripped by a dream – a nightmare of terrifying proportions. "No…" she muttered, her voice low. "No, Father, please…"

The book tumbled from her limp hands and fell to the floor, landing limply, looking like a dying bird as its pages flapped in the breeze from the open window.

Jay's breathing became quick and shallow, her eyes rolled. Her voice grew louder, more panicked, almost a shout: "Father? Father, what are you doing – why are you – wait – stop – Father, stop – no! No!"

* * *

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is our newest student, Jay. She has asked not to be plied with questions about her ability or her family. Thank you."

Charles sat down as a tide of hushed murmurs broke over the Hall – this was where all the students came together for meals.

Jay, her back hunched up under her grey hoodie and keeping her head down, walked over to an unoccupied chair and sat down. She began pushing her cereal around her bowl with her spoon, not eating anything and not looking at anybody.

Around her, the students chattered and bantered, casually insulting each other or playfully making a spoon hover in the air with their mind; another student melted several pieces of cutlery with her red-hot fingers, and yet another student – a boy of about seventeen with silver-dyed hair and wearing black jeans, goggles, and a silver leather jacket – began racing around the room at such a speed as to be a barely visible blur at the edge of everyone's vision, stealing people's cutlery, empty plates, spoons, watches, and, once, someone's belt, until the little kleptomaniac was spotted and forced to give everything back.

Jay ignored them all, even the kid whose trousers fell around his ankles as the speedster boy ran past him, grinning maniacally before throwing the belt as high as he could into the air, where it caught on the corner of a painting and swung there, too high to get at except for anyone who could fly. Warren flapped his wings, took off, and retrieved the belt, trying hard not to laugh at the speedster's antics as the scarlet-faced boy took the belt and fastened it around his waist.

Jay kept her eyes down and stayed stubbornly silent.

Eventually, inevitably, a girl sitting a few seats away with black hair streaked with bright pink and colourful diaphanous wings – _Pixie_ was her code name, Jay remembered, although it was really Megan – leaned towards her and whispered:

"What's your ability, then?"

"You don't want to know," Jay answered curtly, fighting the urge to hiss at her. She got up, sliding her chair back and leaving long scratch marks in the floor, and stalked out of the Hall and out into the grounds.

She sat down under a spreading oak tree that had a long, burnt scar right through the centre of the trunk. She looked closer, and realised that the tree should be carved in two and lying in pieces, and had obviously been pushed back together with the help of a telekinetic or possibly abnormally strong student.

Jay leant against the trunk, breathing deeply. She felt her wings rubbing together and winced as pain lanced through the damaged muscles. She could hear the birds perched in the tree's branches twittering and nattering away at each other, flapping their wings – their working, perfect wings – and causing the leaves of the oak to rustle as they took off, heading across the grounds.

Jay realised that she was jealous of them – jealous of _birds_, for God's sake. She shifted her back slightly, trying to balance the heavy useless wings, hating them, hating her mutation, hating herself.

She punched the side of the tree and sucked her stinging knuckles.

"Don't do that," said a voice beside her. "Don't beat yourself up."

Jay looked up into the face of a boy with black hair, green eyes and an arrogant, condescending air. She knew this boy – some of the girls sitting near her had been busy gossiping about his looks. The boy was Julian Keller, also known as Hellion, and was a powerful telekinetic.

"No, don't do that," said a second voice, a girl's. Beside Julian was the girl with pink hair – Megan, a. k. a. Pixie. Her wings unfurled from her back and she hovered a few feet above the ground. "Wait for us to join in," the girl continued. "We'd just love to help you out."

"Go away," Jay muttered, crossing her arms and not looking at them.

Megan called over her shoulder: "Hey! You lot! Come over here!"

A small crowd of students – there were maybe ten or at the most fifteen of them – sauntered over to the tree, obviously enjoying the before-lessons half-hour break, lazy smiles on their faces and a cruel glint in all their eyes.

"What's this?" A young man with white-blonde hair and ice-blue eyes looked down at Jay with disdain. Ice coated the tips of his fingers, quickly forming into a short dagger that was the same cold colour as his eyes.

"Don't threaten her, Cain," Julian said dismissively. "It's not as though she can fly away or anything." He laughed. Then he concentrated, lifting Jay into the air with his mind. Jay cried out in surprise and pain as Julian slammed her against the trunk of the tree, viciously hard.

"What are you doing?" she yelled.

"Seeing if you can deal with being off the ground, flatscan." Julian grinned cruelly, and the others laughed. Cain's icy dagger twirled in his hands. Jay didn't know this, but _flatscan _was a derogatory term for a non-mutant.

Julian pushed her into the trunk, compressing and crushing Jay's already-mangled wings; Jay cried out again, and a chorus of laughter immediately followed her scream. Megan flew up into the air and slapped Jay across the face. "Can't fly away, stupid flatscan?" the girl taunted. "What's stopping you? Fly away, little girl!"

Soon a chant of "_Fly away! Fly away!_" had started up, and Julian lifted Jay higher and higher into the air, pulling her away from the tree and leaving her hanging in mid-air, still struggling, the scarred, twisted wings on her back visible for all of the chanting students to see.

Cain pointed: "What happened, flatscan? Did you fly too high and hit a plane?" He laughed at his own joke, and Megan joined in: "She probably couldn't flap her way out of a paper bag, poor lamb," she said in a mock-sympathetic voice. "No sense of direction at all. She'd probably just go one way – down!" The kids started laughing again, and another student, one by the name of Laurie with shoulder-length blonde hair and brown eyes, pushed her way through. Laurie, better known as Wallflower, was able to project pheromones from her body to stimulate different emotions in other people.

"Let's see how scared she can get," she told Julian. Julian nodded an affirmation for her to continue.

Laurie began to project 'scared' pheromones at Jay. Within a few seconds, Jay's face had drained of colour, her eyes widened and her hands shook. Julian dropped her, and she landed on the ground in a crumpled heap, whimpering and shivering, frightened beyond comprehension or the bounds of sanity.

"That's enough, Laurie," Megan said. Laurie just smiled, still projecting her 'scared' pheromones. "I said THAT'S ENOUGH!" Megan yelled. "We can't do anymore without being discovered. _She's _not going to tell anyone."

Julian leant down, bringing his face close to Jay's. "You'll see us again, little flatscan. Count on it. Next time, you'll meet Cain up close and personal."

Cain grinned, lengthening his icy dagger.  
"C'mon," Megan said. "Leave her, Laurie."

Within a few seconds, the crowd of students had left. As well as this, among them had been a student called Clinton who called himself Distortion. Clint was able to distort other people's vision and hearing, so no one passing by had seen the crowd or Jay, and had only perceived the entire episode as a slight blur similar to heat distortion and a faint, aggravating buzz in their ears.

Jay sat, still shivering, until the bell for morning lessons rang. She got up and walked back inside, trying to shake off the fear.

* * *

First lesson was Maths with their teacher Bobby Drake, better known as Iceman. Jay was dreading Maths, but Bobby's way of teaching – engaging them by letting them use their abilities – helped her to understand. Pretty soon everybody was laughing at the battle of additions, subtractions, multiplications and divisions between Bobby (using his ice-creating ability) and John Allerdyce, also known as Pyro, who was using his pyrokinetic ability.

"Sixteen times six, John," Bobby said, maintaining his icy shield.

John swore under his breath. If he got one question wrong, that meant he had to back down. "I don't know." He muttered.

"Louder, John." Bobby said. Ice crystals formed around his hands, strengthening the ice shield as John's fire returned with renewed force.

"I don't know!" John yelled, and the whole of the Lower Set Maths laughed, even Jay, as his fire died.

"It's ninety-six, for future reference," Bobby said, motioning for him to go back to his chair and sit down. John slunk away, looking murderous. He would be teased like hell for this at break.

* * *

The second lesson before break was Art, taught by an older student who Jay didn't recognise. She had black hair, glasses, and a stern expression, and she introduced herself as Miss Turner.

Jay liked Art. She pulled her sketchbook and pencils out of her bag and started drawing, her pencil flying across the paper. She drew things from real life – the person sitting next to her, the birds perched on the telephone wire outside, and once Miss Turner's glasses lying abandoned on a table, but she specialised in drawing odd, surreal and strangely dreamlike images. When they were left to themselves, given half the lesson to 'test their capabilities' and draw whatever the students wanted, Jay drew a girl huddled at the base of a tree, surrounded by a group of students. Julian's features were drawn in perfect detail on every glaring face. The tree's branches were black, as though burnt, and tapered down into thin, winding tendrils.

Instead of leaves, the tree was covered in hundreds of alive, flapping, flailing wings, all fully feathered and textured, straining to break away from the branches. Then the tree's branches curved round and had pinned the girl to the tree, the wings in place of the leaves smothering her.

The crowd of Julians were looking up at her, and they were laughing, green-tinted eyes glinting. For a second, on the page, the wings on the tree seemed to move. Jay set about colouring them in, so that they stood out among the black branches.

"What's this, Jay?" Miss Turner looked over her shoulder. "It's very good."

"It's nothing," Jay muttered, pushing the drawing away and starting another, this one an intricate study of a feathered wing, like Warren's.

The bell rang for break. Jay stood up, packing her things back into her bag and slouching out of the art room and back into the grounds. She was dreading break. She knew that Julian would come back for another pass, possibly with Cain (the ice-creating teenager was almost up to Bobby's standards now, and had taken the name 'Shiver' for when he was called out on missions.).

"Hey, flatscan!"

"Shit," she muttered under her breath. "Go away!" she shouted, not looking around at whoever had yelled. Jay went and sat down under a different tree, hoping against hope that they wouldn't notice her.

No such luck.

A thick, gnarled root, coated with clods of earth, rose out of the ground with a ripping noise and curled around her ankle, with enough pressure to almost break it. Jay swore again, tugging at it, then a young man with brown hair and a tattoo of a winding green vine climbing up his neck dropped from the tree.

"No more running, flatscan," he crowed. Then he looked to his right and yelled: "Distortion, no one can hear or see us, right?"

Clint, who'd been leaning against a nearby tree, nodded.

"Who are you?" Jay asked, wincing as the pressure on her ankle increased.

"My name's Arthur," he said, with obvious disdain for the name, "But you can call me Earthstorm." He increased the pressure on her ankle, then called up a second root, which wrapped around her other leg.

"Stop being cocky, Arthur, no one but the flatscan can hear you boast." Julian, his green eyes glittering in the sunlight, sauntered up to Jay.

"Where are Laurie and Megan?" Jay said scathingly. "They abandoned you already for someone better? I'm not surprised."

Julian hit her across the face, his face angry, suffused with blood; his eyes glowed slightly green with his telekinetic ability (this was a side effect that Julian wasn't able to control.). "They're on other business, bitch. Seems there's some idiotic mutant who's been caught by Purifiers and needed help."

Jay wiped away the trickle of blood from her nose, then Julian slammed her arms back against the tree with his telekinesis. Julian gripped her twisted wings and Jay screamed as he began to tear them apart, separating them into two wings and then twisting them back into a scarred, broken mess that was even worse than they'd been before.

"What's the problem, flatscan?" Arthur taunted, still using the roots to keep Jay's feet anchored to the ground. "Can't handle a little pain?"

Julian ground her back against the tree with his mind, and Jay screamed again. The bark was tearing into her skin, pushing against her wings.

"I thought – Cain would be here." Jay muttered.

"Nah, we're saving him for lunch break, flatscan," Clint said from his place leaning on the nearby tree. "He's a right sadist, but useful in his way. Unlike you – what's the point of a mutation that you can't use? So you're a flatscan, see? Just a little flatscan bitch." He grinned as Jay struggled, muttering obscenities at him.

"No lady in her right mind would use that word, flatscan!" Clint said with mock horror, eyebrows hitting Heaven in mock shock as well. He continued laughing as Julian twisted her wings even more, making her writhe and contort against the tree, screaming, but unheard and unheeded by the other students passing by, thanks to Clint's ability.

Julian let her down, and, gasping, Jay went limp against the tree. Arthur laughed, using his ability to bind her arms with snaking roots as well.

Jay knew that the bell for the end of break would sound in a few minutes, then she could tell someone.

"And don't think of telling, flatscan," Julian snarled. "Or Cain will pay you a visit, and we don't want _that_. Don't want you dead before we've had our fun."

Arthur withdrew the roots back into the tree and, as soon as he and Julian had left, Clint allowed the sound and vision to return to normal.

Two minutes later, the bell rang for the end of break. Calming her breathing and hurriedly brushing away the dirt and blood from her clothes and face, Jay stood up, grabbed her bag, and walked back into the school, trying to control the fear of Cain that had been instilled in her.

_You will not tell._

* * *

Her next lesson was Ability Control, but she had to sit out and watch the others practice with excited grins plastered over their faces.

She saw John practising his pyrokinesis, hitting targets every time. Another student who could walk through walls – her name was Kitty, Jay remembered, then blushed when she remembered she'd thrown Kitty against a wall and knocked her out the first time they'd met – walk through several solid objects, phase through a person and pieces of technology. Kitty's phasing ability disrupted circuits and caused the tech to shut down.

Jay felt incredibly alone.

She watched as Julian threw target after target and object after object across the room, exploding things in mid-air, stopping things, punching holes in steel, and other displays of his telekinetic ability.

_You will not tell. _

Cain, his sadistic smile stretching his lips, practised on human-shaped dummies that were filled with water. As Jay watched, he froze the water so that it slowly emerged from the arms of the dummies in long, thin, glittering spikes, shredding the fabric that was the dummies' skin.

Jay imagined that happening to a real person – veins and flesh and skin sliced beyond tolerance, the elegant spikes frozen blood creeping inexorably upwards – and tried not to think about it happening to _her_.

* * *

The lesson just before lunch break was English. Jay's teacher was a cheerful woman in her early forties with curly red hair, who introduced herself as Mrs Horsley. Today they were experimenting with Creative Writing, and were given an initial idea to start with and develop into a story throughout the lesson.

_Write about a time when you were scared (you can make it up if you wish)_, read the assignment on the board.

Jay began to write, words flowing from her pen. She wrote:

_Darkness surrounds me; thick, choking, and almost alive. I can hear the screeching, scraping sound of the walls closing in, slow and inexorably. They sound like a vulture calling out for its fellows as it circles over a dying carcass. _

_Blood soaks my side, the wound hasn't clotted yet and blood is pooling around me, warm and sticky as it begins to dry. _

_I'm not even sure how it happened – the memories flicker before my eyes again: just a flash at the corner of my vision, two small pinpoints of green light; eyes. Then a dark silhouette looming over me – pain spreads through me like an infection, invading my mind, gripping its razor talons around my body, tearing at me, compressing my ribcage until I'm sure the bones will burst through the skin – I scream, feeling skin and muscle tear – and then darkness. _

_Now I'm here, in the dark, with walls closing in, closer and closer with every passing second. I wonder which will get me first – blood loss or the walls?_

_I hug my knees to my chest, trying to make myself as small as possible, curling up even though it sends pain lancing through my side again. _

"_Help," I whisper, my voice small, "Help me…" _

"_I'll help you out."  
My head jerks up and I look around wildly, staring into the choking blackness for the source of the voice. _

"_Who –"_

"_I said, I'll help, flatscan." The voice is bitter, the sentence almost a snarl. _

"_Go away!" I scream, hugging my knees tighter. "You're dead!"_

_The walls stop their grinding, growling, movement, and in midst of the terrified, shocked silence, a dark silhouette of a person saunters towards me, his smile glinting in the green light that emanates from his eyes. _

"_No," Hellion says, "Not dead, flatscan." He throws me into the air with his telekinesis, and slams me against an unmoving wall. A scream – my scream – echoes around the room as the wound in my side is torn open again and Hellion begins to crush me into the wall. I feel more than one of my ribs crack under the telekinetic pressure, and hot blood climbs up my throat. I feel it trickle out of my mouth, until my chin and throat are as slick with blood as my side. I can't move to cover the wound, can't escape the pain that tears at me with vengeful claws. _

_Hellion's smile is much too close, too wide, mad and manic. "Not dead," he hisses, "Not dead, not dead, not dead!" he crows, elated. "But I have to pay you back, don't I, little flatscan?" _

_He touches my face, but his ability snaps my head back, slamming the back of my skull against the concrete wall. Stars burst in front of my eyes – bright red, bloody stars that slowly fade back to Hellion's green-lit stare. _

"_But first," he continues, "I'm going to let an old friend have some fun. Shiver!" he calls over his shoulder. "She's here!"_

_Shiver, his white-blonde hair tinted green from the light emanating from Hellion, steps from the darkness of the shadows. "Glad you're here, flatscan," he purrs, "It's great to see you like this." Ice crystals begin to form around his fingers, then he discards the slowly growing dagger for an alternative._

"_Oh, God…" I whisper, unable to keep the fear from showing on my face, and my hands shake. I can hear my heart, thumping so loudly that I'm surprised that it doesn't make the walls shake. "No…"_

_Shiver's smile is worse than Hellion's, full of icy precision rather than arrogance and madness. He advances towards me, Hellion still keeping me pressed against the wall as he does so, and places his hand on my arm. _

_As soon as his fingers make contact with my skin, I scream. Inside my arm, pain erupts, every nerve inside sliced to pieces. Slowly, the pain extends through my arm, tearing every vein, nerve, and muscle until it bursts into the light. I scream even more, staring transfixed at the glittering scarlet spikes emerging from my skin all over my arm, not believing what I see – Shiver has frozen my _blood_._

_Shiver's hand moves, away from the frozen blood and across my shoulders. His fingers caress my neck, and I know what he's going to do. _

"_Please…" I whisper. "Please, Shiver… don't…"_

_But he just smiles. As frost spreads over my body and pain begins to tear into my neck, he puts one hand under my chin, lifts my head up, and kisses me. _

_My lips turn blue almost immediately, blood freezing, skin coated with a thin layer of ice. I can't scream. _

_Fear invades my mind. _

_Everything turns black. But the pain goes on. I can still feel my body, still linked to it, still in agony. Sight returns again – was I dead, just for a moment?_

_Shiver pulls away from me, his grin spreading across his face again. "Get me water, Hellion." He says, his voice full of anticipation. Hellion obligingly pulls some from the air and ground, leaving it hovering in mid-air next to Shiver. "Crack open the flatscan's mouth for me." Again, Hellion obliges. "One more favour, if you please." Hellion smiles again. He doesn't need to be told what to do. _

_He pours the water into my mouth. I can sense it flooding into my lungs, even though I'm not breathing, Shiver is just experimenting with what he can do. Shiver walks up to my corpse, and I can see the unsaid laughter bubbling up behind his eyes. His hands are on my chest, and they are cold, so cold. _

_The water in my chest freezes and expands, bursting out of my ribcage as long spikes like the ones in my arms, scattering ice shards, splintered bone, and bits of lung and skin across the room. _

"_Cool," Hellion says. "No pun intended. Reckon she looks better now?" They look at my mangled body. _

"_Yeah," Shiver says, laughing. "I kissed her, so she was pretty."_

_Hellion and Shiver walk away, their laughter at odds with the darkness, the blood, and the mess of limbs and flesh and ice that was once me. _

_Then Hellion waves his hand, and the walls start their grinding movement again. _

_I try to scream, to tell him to stop, but I have no voice. _

_No, please –_

_Help – anyone, help me – _

_The walls are closing in faster and faster, and fear grips me again. _

_The walls clang together. _

_N-_

"Well… Jay… that was…" Mrs Horsley seemed lost for words. "That was…"

"Sorry, miss." Jay had just handed her book in to the teacher, and Mrs Horsley had read it out to the class.

The class was silent, probably shocked out of their wits. Silently, Jay thanked God that Julian and Cain hadn't been in the class.

"Don't tell," she said, before gathering up her things, stuffing them in her bag, and walking out of the class as the bell for lunch rang.

_You will not tell._

* * *

Jay sat under a spreading sycamore tree in one corner of the grounds, far from the others. She had eaten her lunch within the first ten minutes of lunch break, which was about and hour and a half long.

Now she was waiting for them to come. Jay was sure they would.

Jay was terrified and she couldn't stop her hands from shaking, but she wasn't going to admit it, not to them or to any other living being. She was scared of Cain and what he could do, and Julian and Clint and Arthur and Laurie and the rest of them.

_Scared of your own kind, _she thought. _What have you come to, Jay Farley?_

Suddenly, a flash of jeans and Led Zeppelin T-shirt – Clint's unofficial 'uniform' – rushed past her.

"Clint," Jay greeted him, inclining her head.

"Flatscan," he answered scornfully. "Y'know, I was at the back of that English class, and no one noticed. I heard the entire story – amazing description, by the way. I could almost hear the screams. But Julian and Cain aren't pleased at all. You tried to tell people about what they're doing. Like I said – not pleased. Scared yet, bitch?"

"You think, you little toad?" Jay fought back the fear, hiding behind a façade of false confidence and ignoring the swear word.

Clint laughed. "Don't act cocky with me, flatscan. Cain's going to use your own method to hurt you, and he says to thank you for helping him think of it."

Suddenly Cain's freezing fingers were there, around her neck and under her chin, frost spreading from his fingertips as he pushed her face up towards his – eyes like chips of ice stared into her amber ones –

Jay managed to scream once, before the ice covered her lips and she was silent.

* * *

From his office, Charles looked out of the mullioned windows at the grounds, scrutinising the students that were milling around, talking, laughing, and messing around with their abilities (the speedster boy was, yet again, grinning as he sped through the grounds faster than the eye could see.).

Charles sensed the fear and pain that was emanating from one corner of the grounds. Using the eyes of other creatures – birds mostly, but never his students – Charles tried to see what was going on, but found nothing there.

His mind skipping from creature to creature, he found a particular blackbird that was significantly closer to the place. He looked through the bird's eyes –

"My God," he whispered. Then he called for Jean.

_Jean?_

_Professor?_

_Jean, come up to my office immediately. There is something you need to see. _


	3. Chapter 3

X-Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

* * *

Note: This contains unfamiliar characters that you won't recognise (they're more of my OCs) and some that you will – Julian, Megan, Peter, Jean, etc. etc. I have also altered a few of the comic characters, sorry.

Contains infrequent bad language.

* * *

Singing from heartache from the pain  
Taking my message from the veins  
Speaking my lesson from the brain  
Seeing the beauty through the

Pain

You made me a, you made me a believer, believer  
Pain  
You break me down, you build me up, believer, believer  
Pain  
Oh let the bullets fly, oh let them rain  
My life, my love, my drive, it came from pain  
You made me a, you made me a believer, believer

I was choking in the crowd  
Building my rain up in the cloud  
Falling like ashes to the ground  
Hoping my feelings, they would drown  
But they never did, ever lived, ebbing and flowing  
Inhibited, limited  
Till it broke up and it rained down  
It rained down, like

Pain

_Believer, _by Imagine Dragons

* * *

Chapter Three: **Blood On The Ice; Ice In The Blood**

* * *

Cain was grinning; the air froze around him as Jay moaned softly, her skin tinged with blue, her lips coated with ice, her hair frozen so that it hung down her back like a waterfall, her breathing shallow and spikes of frozen blood protruding from her arms, thin as scarlet needles.

Jay had long since stopped screaming – instead frozen tears were in the act of trickling down her face.

"That's enough, Cain," Julian said softly. "You don't want to kill her."

Cain turned on him. '"Why not? Flatscans are useless anyway." He reached down, placing his hand on Jay's neck. Jay immediately began to writhe, unable to scream, but her eyes bulged with pain and fear.

"That's enough, Cain." Julian repeated. Cain just smiled as Jay's breathing began to falter.

"STOP!" Julian shouted, forcing Cain away from Jay and pushing the boy to the ground with his ability. Cain tried to get up, his fingers digging into the grass, but he was utterly helpless. "What did we say, Cain?" Julian growled, teeth gritted, as he advanced on the now-cowering boy, "No killing. Repeat after me – _no killing_."

Cain choked as an invisible force latched around his neck. Cain was lifted into the air so that his feet dangled about two feet off the ground. His eyes bulged and his fingers clawed desperately at his neck. "Julian…" he managed to whisper.

"I said, _repeat after me. No – killing._" Julian spoke slowly and carefully, as though addressing a young child.

"N-No killing." Cain croaked, his face slowly turning as blue as his eyes. Julian let him go with a grimace, flinging him to the ground. Cain landed face-down and did not get up.

The ice around Jay's lips began to melt away, although the spikes of frozen blood didn't melt. Her eyes were glassy, like marbles, and she lay on her back, as still as Cain.

Then, from his place lounging against a nearby tree, Clint howled and clutched his head, then he doubled over, still whimpering and crying out. Instantly, Julian knew that every person in the grounds could see and here them.

_WHAT ARE YOU DOING? _A voice stabbed into Julian's mind, a vengeful female presence – Jean Grey.

"I-I –"

_Julian. What have you done? _A softer, calmer voice than Jean's sounded in his mind, but it was no less angry.

"She's just a flatscan bitch!" Julian snarled. "She doesn't belong here, send her home, and make her suffer!"

Charles's chair came to a stop next to Jay. His face was creased with worry and anger, and he reached down with difficulty and brushed the girl's forehead. "Jean – go and find Josh," he told Jean, his voice panicked, urgent, on the edge of despair. "I don't what he's doing, just get him here."

Jean, who was standing next to Charles, immediately sent out a psychic call, which was heard loud and clear by everyone in the grounds: _JOSH! GET OVER HERE NOW! THIS GIRL IS DYING!_

Josh – a student better known as Elixir with an ability to heal whose skin had turned golden after a serious injury – ran to them, his metallic skin gleaming in the sunlight. He placed his hands on Jay's chest, and a shudder ran through the girl's body. Steam rose from her skin as the scarlet spikes of frozen blood receded back into her skin, replacing it. Her breathing (which, unknown to everyone except Josh, had stopped about twenty seconds ago) returned, steadied, and became regular again. Jay's lips regained their normal colour, and her eyelids flickered.

"She's unconscious, but stable," Josh told them, removing his hands and taking the girl in his arms. He began to carry her back to the school, flanked by Jean, Charles, Julian, and Cain, who was stumbling along and barely keeping his balance.

Josh put Jay down on one of the bed in the hospital wing, told Hank (who was enjoying a rare mug of tea and subsequently spat most of it out when he saw the state Jay was in) to keep her monitored, and walked back out again to carry on playing basketball with his friends out in the grounds.

* * *

Charles sat opposite Julian.

They had not talked for the past half an hour. Charles was waiting for the teenager's natural sulk to get him to talk first.

"Aren't you going to ask me anything, then?" Julian snarled, glaring at Charles.

"I would like to find out why you were bullying Miss Farley, Julian," Charles told him, attempting to keep his voice level and calm. "Can you tell me why?"

"Because she doesn't belong here, sir! To us she's just a sneaking, useless flatscan!"

"Don't use that word, please, Julian. Miss Farley is not human, she simply possesses a mutation that has been compromised by her father's treatment of her."

Julian paled, and his eyes widened in shock. "You mean – her wings –"

"Yes," Charles agreed, "Her wings are irreparably damaged, even by Josh's standards. He can't heal her."

"Oh, God," Julian whispered. "I…I didn't know… I assumed…" his voice trailed off.

"It's all right, Julian," Charles assured him. "At least, Jay's body is sound. I can't say the same for the poor girl's mind. She may be permanently traumatised."

"Professor – sir – that was Cain. I-I got him to stop…"

Charles looked at him, his face solemn. "Yes, you did. In doing so, you probably saved Jay's life. But you also twisted Cain's legs to the point where they have fractured from ankle to knee."

Julian thought back, trying to remember what had been going through his mind when he'd lashed out at Cain. "I must have overreacted," he said. "I just wanted to stop him from killing the flatscan. It just seemed… wrong."

Charles's face hardened. "I'm glad to see you possess some restraint, Julian. Now go and see Ororo. She has work for you to do as payment."

"Yes, sir," Julian said meekly, before getting up and leaving the infirmary.

Charles wheeled his chair to Jay's bedside, and gently probed the girl's mind. It was a jumble of fear, pain, terrible memories and blood.

"Is she… okay, Professor?" Jean asked hesitantly.

"No, Jean," Charles answered, his voice mournful. "I sense a… a kind of hunger in her that wasn't there before – she will do _anything, _anything at all, to be able to use her wings properly."

"Which means people might try to get her to do things, telling her that they can help Jay fly, and lie about it?" Jean guessed.

Charles nodded. "When she wakes up, Jay will be frightened, confused, and disoriented. I am going to talk to Cain, so you need to reassure her for me, try and calm her down."

Jean sat down next to Jay's bed. "Okay."

Charles turned and wheeled his chair out of the room.

* * *

Jean was still sitting there at around half past eleven p.m., when Jay's eyelids flickered and opened. She blinked. "Where…"

"The hospital wing," Jean told her. "You were brought here after Cain tried to kill you, but Josh healed you and you're much better now."

Jay shivered. "Jean… oh God, Jean… I thought Cain was going to… going to…" She burst into tears.

Jean used her ability to push her chair a little closer, and put her arm around Jay's shoulders. "It's okay, Jay. You're safe."

Jay huddled up at one end of the bed, almost sitting on her pillow, hugging her knees to her chest. "Get away from me!" she screamed. Then she buried her face in her hands. "No, no, no…" she moaned. On her back, her wings twitched and writhed in agitation.

"Jay?" Jean tentatively touched the girl's mind with her own – it was utter turmoil, a raging mass of blood and green light, a mental sea of ice and Cain's wide smile.

"Go away!" she screamed again, but Jean sensed that the scream wasn't for her, but for Cain and Julian and Clint.

Jean left her and walked away from the hospital wing.

* * *

There was another person in the hospital wing.

There was another person in the grounds.

There was another person in the Hall, and by the tree, and standing with Julian.

He was watching. Waiting for his chance.

* * *

Quentin Quire sat in his dormitory, sending messages, but not to his friends. The only real friend he had in the world was the small object clutched in his hand – a black inhaler marked with a red X.

Quentin was white-skinned, tall for his age, arrogant, and domineering. He wore a red-and-black striped woollen vest over a white shirt, grey trousers, and ankle-high grey boots with thick soles. Quentin had recently dyed his hair (which was shaved so that it covered the top and a little of the sides of his head) a bright, ostentatious purple, and he rather liked it.

Quentin was an omega level mutant – meaning that he had almost god-level powers. His abilities were, among other things, omega level psychic abilities, telepathy, telekinesis and superhuman intellect.

Quentin smiled, flipping the black inhaler from hand to hand. So the little crippled girl wanted a helping hand, did she?

He was certain that he could help.

* * *

Jay woke up. She shook off the clinging tentacles of the dream, trying to yank herself back to reality. For a second, Cain's smile filled her brain, but a moment later it was gone.

"Good morning, Miss Farley." Jay looked up. There was a purple-haired boy sitting by the side of her bed. He was smiling, a smile that was not unlike Cain's.

"Who are you?" she asked. Her wings twitched nervously.

"My name is Quentin Quire," Quentin told her, "and I believe you need some help involving your… ah… ability."

Jay turned away from him. "If you're just going to tease me, you can get the hell out of here, Mr Quire."

"No!" Quentin's voice resounded around the empty hospital wing. "I-I mean, no, I'm not going to tease you. I came to help."

Jay's head snapped back to him. "I don't need your help," she snarled. "I don't need your precious pity."

Quentin stood up abruptly, brushing imaginary dust from the knees of his trousers, glaring. "I guess I'll just have to convince you tomorrow." He stalked out of the room, pushing aside pieces of furniture with his telekinesis, just to show Jay that he wasn't above pulling a Julian.

* * *

Night blanketed the sky, swaddling it in darkness.

In the hospital wing, Charles wheeled his chair around to Jay's head, the wheels gliding silently across the well-polished floor. Slowly and with infinite care, he began to reach into the girl's fragile mind again, sensing the horror of her nightmares.

"Sleep well, Jay," he whispered, brushing them away from her like they were so many troublesome cobwebs.

Early next morning, Jay woke up. She hadn't had a single nightmare, hadn't seen a single image of Cain's wide smile.

"Better today, Jay?" Charles was still sitting by her bedside, smiling, looking down at her in a fatherly manner.

Jay sat up a little, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

'I took the liberty of bringing you breakfast," Charles said, gesturing to a small table on the other side of her bed. There was a tray on it, containing a bowl of cereal, a plate of toast and (most importantly) a steaming mug of tea.

"Thank you," Jay's voice was small and nervous. "Will he be back soon?"  
Charles felt the girl's mind again, gently, carefully, finding a memory of a purple-haired young man talking to her.

"Who, Jay? If you mean Cain, he is being kept away from you."

"No, sir, it's not him. He… he said his name was Quire."

Charles felt worry spread like a cancer through her mind, a little fear as to who Quire really was. Charles felt the worry infect him as well. _Young Quentin…_ Charles considered the boy; he was omega level, that was certain, but he was erratic and a little strange, even for Charles's school. He had mood swings about every thirty seconds and the arrogant attitude only made it worse.

"I wouldn't worry about him. Just on a passing visit, was he?"

"Y-Yes. I guess so."

Charles smiled. "Eat your breakfast, Jay. Your toast is getting cold." As Jay pulled the tray off the table on onto her lap, he wheeled his chair away from her and out of the hospital wing, the smile still playing across his lips.

* * *

"Hey."

Jay shifted a little, turning onto her side and not waking up. Quentin reached into her mind and wrenched her awake.

Jay screamed, but Quentin, still in her head, forced her to shut her mouth. "Good girl," he whispered. "Listen to me." He relinquished his mental grip on Jay and she slumped back, clutching her head.

"What… are you?" she moaned.

Quentin grinned. "Mutant, of course. Omega level. Now, little girl, I thought you wanted some help with those wings of yours."

"No." Jay said flatly. "Josh can heal them – he _will_ heal them."

Quentin pulled up a chair and sat down. When he spoke, his voice was like a nettle sting – jabbing in every uncomfortable place that was in Jay's mind. "Still clinging to that little hope, Jay? Sunk that low, have you? I'm afraid that our dear Josh can't heal you, Jay. He isn't able to, and he wouldn't anyway. Not willing to waste his precious energy on anything other than those_ useless _X-Men." Jay flinched as the poisonous words left his mouth. Her wings twitched, but that was the extent of movement of which she was able.

"What… what can I do? Th-there's _got _to be a way!" Tears gathered in the corners of Jay's eyes and spilled down her cheeks. Almost tenderly, Quentin used his telekinesis to lift them away and send them spinning through the air, reflecting the sunlight from the windows, sending dazzling shards of rainbow light through each tear.

"See," Quentin told her, "Even a cripple like you can produce something that is infinitely beautiful. Everyone deserves that chance."

Jay, transfixed by the swirling cloud of tears, listened. "Can… can you help me?"

"If you want me to," Quentin grinned. He pulled a few more tears from her face and sent them dancing through the air again. Then, still using his telekinesis, he formed the shimmering water into a near-perfect facsimile of Jay's face.

"See?" he told her. "So beautiful. And all from tears."

Jay wiped her eyes as the tear-face dissipated into the surrounding air. "How can you help me, Quire?"

"Please, call me Quentin."

"Alright, Quentin. How can you help me? If Josh can't, and he's the school's best healer, than what's your ability?" Jay's voice was sudden and sharp.

Quentin, still wearing his grin, plastered across his face, leant back on his chair and crossed his legs so that his grey boots thumped together. "A mere four or five things – telepathy, psychic abilities, telekinesis, superhuman intellect, able to manifest telekinetic energy… and other things."

"Nothing to do with healing, then." Jay stared at him, scrutinising him, clearly suspicious and distrusting. "I thought you could help me! You gave me real hope, for once in my life!"

Quentin jerked as she shouted, his face twisted in anger, then he slammed a burst of green energy over her mouth with such force that it pushed her back against the bedframe, shoving her head back.

"_I thought you wanted to fly, bitch._" Quentin snarled, his voice cold and harsh, filling the empty room. Manacles of green telekinetic energy formed around Jay's wrists and trapped her there.

She nodded frantically, making inarticulate noises through the telekinetic gag over her mouth, her hair tangled around her face and neck. Quentin let her go, and Jay lay there, shivering, not moving for fear of being trapped again. "Want… to fly," she gasped. "Please… anything…"

Quentin settled himself back in his chair as though nothing had happened. "You have money, I take it?"

"Uh-huh. A bit."

"Enough for five dollars a week? Paid to me?" Quentin stared at her, his gaze unwavering. He could just as easily have searched through her mind for the answer, but preferred less violent means after what had just happened. He'd lost control. He berated himself for it.

"Yes."

"Then stay right there, and you'll meet me again tonight, at… let me see… quarter past eleven. And you have the money with you already. I can read you like a book, Jay Farley."

Quentin got up from his chair and walked out of the hospital wing.

* * *

Quarter past eleven.

Think about it.

Nobody is out of their beds, nobody is in the streets, and it's much quieter than at midnight – midnight is when the foxes come out.

Stars prick the sky like glowing needles, circling the sky like vultures circling over a dying animal.

Quentin seemed to melt out of the shadows. Jay was sitting up, alert and a little frightened that he might come.

"Jay."

Jay nearly jumped out of her skin. "What the – oh. You're here."

"I pride myself on being punctual," Quentin grinned. He was holding a black inhaler that was marked with a red X.

Quentin sat down. "This," he told her, "is Hypercortisone D, also known as Kick. It is a drug able to enhance mutant powers up to five times for five hours at a time. And I think that it could fix your wings."

* * *

**Huge, huge thank you to everyone who has viewed and visited this story. Thank you to Rayven14 for following this story! And (once again) please ****review! I would like to know what you think of the story, so please do!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


	4. Chapter 4

X Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

* * *

**Author's Note: In this iteration of Charles, he looks like James McAvoy, just because I think he's more optimistic and helpful to Jay's predicament. Thanks to everyone who is reading this and I'm so sorry for the delay!**

* * *

_I thought that love was in the drugs_

_But the more I took_

_The more it took away_

_I thought that love was on the stage_

_You give yourself to strangers_

_We don't have to be afraid _

_And then it tries to find a home_

_And then, oh, and I'm alone_

_Picking it apart_

_Staring at your phone_

* * *

_Hunger_, by Florence and The Machine

* * *

Chapter Four: **Kick**

* * *

"You said… you can fix me? It can fix me?" Jay reached out for Quentin's hand, but he jerked it away.

"Uh-uh. Not right now. Money first."

Jay crumpled backwards, instantly folding in on herself, retreating. "S-Sorry."

Quentin held out his hand, and Jay rummaged around under her mattress until she pulled out the required money and handed it to him.

"Thanks," Quentin grinned. For a second, Jay thought he might just walk away from her, not give it to her, then he did. Jay grasped the inhaler so hard that her knuckles went white.

"Hold onto it," Quentin said. "Like I said –"

Then Jay took the inhaler. As soon as whatever was inside was in her lungs, she smiled. Suddenly her teeth looked sharper. Then she doubled over. Looking at her back, Quentin saw muscles and skin ripping and tearing and healing over in the space of a few seconds.

Then, achingly slowly, one wing and then the other unfolded. Jay's wingspan was huge, as each wing was at least the length of her body and double the width. Jay grinned, and for a second her eyes flared scarlet. She sat up, then swung her legs out of her bed and got up. Her wings spread and flexed – they were dragon-like, a deep crimson and webbed with pulsing veins.

"How do you feel?" Quentin asked. He knew what it was like to have the euphoria of Kick surging through your veins.

"Great." The slightly mad grin that spread across Jay's face spoke otherwise.

"Don't try to fly just yet," Quentin cautioned, ready to telekinetically restrain her if necessary. "Remember, you've never actually flown before."

Jay's wings began to beat the air faster and faster, and tendons and bones popped as she battled gravity for a moment, then in one soaring movement she flew up to a high exposed rafter and perched there, staring down with her now-scarlet eyes at Quentin and giggling like a hyperactive little kid.

"Can't you come up here as well?" Jay's wings spread again and nearly hit the rafters close to her.

Quentin used his telekinesis to manifest green ethereal wings, almost as wide as Jay's, and flew up to join her on the rafter, although as soon as his feet touched the wood they vanished in wisps of green energy. Jay was still grinning, running her hands over her wings, stroking the thin, parchment-like membrane that stretched over the sharply defined bones beneath. "You called me beautiful," she looked at Quentin, still lovingly stroking her wings, "Were you lying?"

"No," Quentin told her. "I make a point of not lying."

Something wild seemed to have made it into Jay's expression, and her hands clenched on the rafter. "If you're lying, I'll kill you."

Quentin raised a sceptical eyebrow. "Do you think you could manage that?" He pinched his thumb and forefinger together, green light flickering between his fingers, tracing lace-like patterns in the air.

Then Jay twitched, flinching, stumbling. Her wings seemed to crumple, twisting, bruising, a sickening crack sounding through the hospital wing. Then Jay fell, her mouth open in a shocked scream, her hair flying around her face, her eyes (they were slowly turning back to yellow) wide with fear.

Almost lazily, Quentin manifested long cables of telekinetic energy, which wrapped around her and pulled her up.

"Wh-What happened?" Jay was craning her neck to look at her wings, which were just as twisted and deformed as before the Kick.

"It appears," Quentin said in an interested tone, "that the severity of your ability's state has caused the Kick to use itself to heal and regenerate the tissue, costing you a great deal of time you could have spent flying." As Jay's face fell and her broken wings twitched and writhed on her back, Quentin smiled reassuringly and, still holding her up and keeping her off the ground using his telekinesis, told her, "Don't worry, Jay. I have more; it's really a business, you know. You just need to pay me."

"I-I don't have much money, Mr Quire."

"I told you before, it's Quentin. Not Mr Quire," Quentin grinned a little more. "And you can always pay me in more ways than money."

Jay rolled her eyes. "I'm not stupid. Don't you dare suggest _that_."

Quentin let her down, shoving her against the floor, trapping her again. Jay struggled, and a shout of pain and anger was halfway out of her mouth when Quentin slammed her head against the ground. Her eyes rolled back in her head, and she slumped, unconscious. Quentin could sense the fractures to her skull, and the damage that had been done. He sighed.

"I wish you hadn't made me do that," he muttered, exasperated. Drawing on his knowledge of Josh and his healing abilities, Quentin knew how to put things back together, but the venture was only in its early stages. Instead, he sent a telepathic message to Charles, carefully phrasing his thoughts and feelings to suit the situation, to convince Charles that he had had nothing to do with it.

_Sir! Sir, come please! Jay's hurt – I think a skull fracture – please!_

_Quentin? Where are you?_

_The hospital wing, sir! Please, sir – I think she's dying! _

_I'm on my way._

* * *

A minute later, the doors crashed open. Charles, Jean, Julian and Josh ran through the doors. Josh was by Jay's side in an instant, his golden hands touching her face and head with precision.

"Hairline fracture," he said. "It seems to be getting worse by the minute, though. That's odd." It was healed in a second, thanks to Josh's ability. "Sir?"

"Yes, Josh?" Charles had wheeled his chair over to Jay and was leaning over her, clearly probing the girl's mind.

Quentin grinned internally. Thanks to his omega level abilities, he had planted false memories in her brain at lightning speed, as his thought processes were faster than a normal human's.

"Sir," Josh's eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling in astonishment, "There's something I've barely ever seen before in her system, sir. It's targeting the naturally regenerative qualities of her X-Gene, amplifying them."

"What is it, Josh?"

Josh felt the girl's wrist, running his golden fingers over the veins. "Something in her head says it's _Kick_, but we don't allow that in the school." When he uttered the word Kick, the syllables were twisted with distaste.

Charles turned to Quentin. "Don't lie."

"About what?" He fought against the pressing power of Charles's mind, so much more powerful and more perceptive than his. Quentin threw him off, green energy beginning to glow around him. Charles's wheelchair slammed into the wall and he slumped forward.

"Professor!" Josh yelled, but a tentacle of telekinetic energy knocked him back before he could run to Charles's aid.

Quentin looked apocalyptic, wild, insane. his smile, his green-lit eyes, they suited him, made him so much more impressive than Julian. Then he collapsed, clutching his head, teeth gritted against a scream that threatened to escape at any second.

The doors of the infirmary were blasted open, and the figure of a woman was silhouetted in the opening. It was Jean. She advanced towards the now-cowering figure of Quentin, her face contorted with fury, her eyes glowing gold. Using her ability, she picked Charles and Josh up and placed them outside the infirmary, where Hank was waiting with his medical equipment.

"What - are - you - _doing_?" she snarled, forcing Quentin back further and further with each word. Quentin's tentacles of energy were knocked aside, and he screamed as Jean launched an attack on the boy's mind as well.

"I wanted to help her!" he shouted, trying to scramble away from Jean. "Please - if she had her ability, then Julian would have no reason to hurt her!"

"Liar," Jean growled, "You would have forced her into something she hated." Quentin screamed again, his mind in agony, his thoughts torn apart even as he tried to formulate a plan, his green energy flickering feeble around him. Jean gave him one last contemptuous glare, then there was a syringe hovering just a millimetre away from Quentin's neck.

"This could take away your ability, Mr Quire," she told him. "So you're going to do what I say." She led him out of the infirmary, the syringe still hovering, almost scratching Quentin's skin. The boy shivered. cowed, terrified, not sure if she was bluffing or not. He followed her out of the destroyed wreck of the infirmary.

* * *

Charles was hooked up to various machines, and the reassuring beep-beep-beep of a heart monitor filled the room. He was intubated for moment, with an oxygen cannula in his nose. He looked unbelievably helpless, just lying there.

"Will he be alright?" Jay asked.

Hank looked at her gravely. "I don't know. He'll probably be alright, no bones broken, but there may be trauma in the brain, and for someone as sensitive as Charles, that could be serious."

"I'm sorry, I caused this, Hank, this is my fault!" Jay shouted, her wings twisting and writhing on her back. "I'm sorry..." She reached out, tentatively touching Charles's hand. "If you can hear me, Professor, I'm so sorry." she whispered, tears pricking her eyes. She closed her eyes.

_It's not your fault, little one. _

Jay gasped, jerking away from him. Hank put a clawed hand on her shoulder. "What happened? You heard him didn't you?" His voice was a surprised, urgent growl, and his grip was tight and uncomfortable. "What did he say?"

"H-He said it wasn't my fault." Jay jerked out of Hank's grip and returned to staring at Charles. _But it was, _she told him. _I agreed to take that drug. _

_Only because of your father. You didn't have a choice. You were pressured into this, both by Quentin and Julian. _

_Where is Quentin? _Jay asked, her curiosity aroused. _Miss Grey took him away. He looked __terrified, _she added with satisfaction.

_Jean is still talking to him,_ Charles said, ignoring Hank's increasingly confused stares as Jay reacted to everything he couldn't hear. Jay grinned. _Serves him right._

Then the door opened. Quentin, his. shoulders hunched, his face pale, sloped inside, his face bruised, his eyes still terrified. His hair was messy and sticking up, exposing the brown roots under the purple dye, and his woollen vest was ripped and unravelling in places. The syringe was still hovering against his carotid artery.

_Good afternoon, Mr Quire, _Charles said. Quentin jumped, his eyes falling on the figure of Charles. _I trust you repent? _

"Yes." A shudder ran up his body. "Sir - I think I can help you." Suspicious stares from Jay, Josh (who had healed himself and was standing on the opposite side of Charle's bed to Jay, golden and metallic as ever) and Hank speared him almost immediately. "I'm not lying!" Quentin protested. "Why would I lie with this," he pointed to the syringe, "threatening to take away everything I am? Sir, just let me bring you back, please!" He was almost begging.

Tentatively, Charles said, _I __think... if you promise not to... mess things up, that would be sufficient. _Quentin closed his eyes for a second, dragging Charles's consciousness back to his sleeping body. "There we go," Quentin murmured as Charles's eyes opened.

"Thankyou, Quentin." Charles inclined his head towards Quentin as he carefully sat up. Hank rushed forwards to help him. As soon as Charles was settled in his wheelchair again, Quentin began to speak, hurriedly, the words rushed, but with utter conviction.

"Sir - when the Kick was inside her, I could see her X-Gene. There's no fixing her wings, but I saw something else as well. Something that can be activated by the drugs in her system - a secondary mutation." Jay's head snapped around, so fast that her neck clicked. Her wings began to twitch. "I could _see _it, sir - and I only need to give her three, maybe four more doses of Kick until it manifests."

Jay shivered. "Why should I believe you, Quentin?" The suspicion and hatred in her voice rang through the room. Quentin twitched, his face suddenly becoming a mask of fury. Green light flickered around his fingers. "Because I told you to!" he snarled, then the syringe pricked his neck, although it didn't discharge its dose of fluid into Quentin's blood. The boy immediately stood stock still, freezing, the green energy dissipating. "Because I'm telling the truth," he whispered in a softer voice.

"He is," Charles assured. "He can help you, Jay."

Quentin pulled another inhaler out of his pocket, handed it to Jay, and stood back expectantly. "Go on. Take it."

"It hurt, last time," Jay whispered, holding the inhaler in her shaking hand, her face full of uncertainty and a little fear. "It was trying to heal my wings. But it can't heal them, can it? It'll just be useless."

"It won't," Charles wheeled his chair to her side. "You will have an ability at the end of this, Jay, I assure you." He smiled. "Trust me."

* * *

Jay was screaming, her wings tearing themselves apart for the fourth time, blood spattering the floor and walls.

"It's alright, Jay," Quentin whispered. "It'll be alright in the end." He was watching her attentively, watching for any perceptible change in her DNA. "Now." he said, softly, touching Jay's shoulder. "That's my girl."

Jay's breathing was harsh and fast, her face covered in sweat. Josh stepped forward to obligingly heal her.

Shakily, Jay got up, holding onto Josh for support. She was shivering, her eyes brimming with tears. "What is it, then?" she asked Quentin. "What's my ability?" Her wings were twitching, shaking, still healing and twisting. Jay stepped away from Josh, even though her legs were still trembling.

"I don't know," Quentin answered, reaching out and taking her hand. "I-" Then his eyes widened, green light flickering sporadically around his body. His breathing switched from languid and calm to harsh rasps, almost hyperventilating; Quentin's back arched, his face draining of blood. He didn't seem able to let go of Jay's hand, and the girl wrenched it out of his grip.

Quentin fell to his knees, blood trickling from the side of his mouth and from a deep gash in his side.

"Quentin!" Charles cried, but Josh was already there, lifting the boy into his arms and carrying him over to the bed that Charles had recently vacated, attaching tubes, wires and patches to Quentin's body with practiced ease. Quentin was bleeding from his side, a deep wound that seemed to be steadily getting worse, the blood still trickling from his mouth showing that internal injuries were horribly present. His face was painted with blood as well, from a shallow cut on his forehead. His eyelids were fluttering between open and closed. One of his legs was twisted at an unnatural angle, a splinter of red-tinged bone sticking through the skin.

Jay's face was almost as pale as Quentin's; she stumbled backwards, leaning against the wall, her palms pressed against it, her breathing harsh, terrified. Jay took her hands away from the wall (there were deep gouge marks in the paint from her nails) and leant back against the wall, her hands clenching into fists. Charles, knowing that Jay was the worst case, wheeled himself towards her.

"Jay," he said, "Do you know what you just did?"

Jay shook her head, clenching her fists so tightly that her nails dug into her palms.

"It appears that you can amplify injuries," Charles continued, "using only your hands. You are a remarkable phenomenon, Jay."

"It doesn't feel like that," Jay muttered bitterly, looking at Quentin. The boy now had an oxygen mask over his face, and Josh was slowly healing the wide hole in Quentin's side, before beginning to search for the multitude of internal injuries that Quentin had attained.

"Jay, you need to learn to control it," Charles smiled. "And I am positive that you will."

Jay turned on him, suddenly furious. "What if I can't, Professor? What if I can't control it?" Charles opened his mouth to speak, but Jay cut him off. "I could end anyone's life with a touch, I could take your hand and paralyse your entire body! And you're asking me to control it?" She was almost screaming. Josh turned away from his ministrations and stared at her in alarm.

"What if, Professor, I can never touch another person again?" Jay shouted. She stormed out of the room, and the sound of her running feet echoed down the corridor.

* * *

**Hi everyone! I won't be able to write for the next week as I'm going camping, but I promise to keep going! Thanks for reading, and please review!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


	5. Chapter 5

X-Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

* * *

**Thankyou to everyone who has read and followed this story! **

* * *

_I sat alone, in bed till the morning  
I'm crying, "They're coming for me"  
And I tried to hold these secrets inside me  
My mind's like a deadly disease_

_I'm bigger than my body  
I'm colder than this home  
I'm meaner than my demons  
I'm bigger than these bones_

_And all the kids cried out, "Please stop, you're scaring me"  
I can't help this awful energy  
God damn right, you should be scared of me  
Who is in control?_

_Control_, by Halsey

* * *

Chapter Five: **RUN FROM ME**

Jay ran, her heart pounding, her hands balled into fists. Students skittered out of her way as she ran, scattering like frightened fish. Her face was pale, her eyes red and puffy from crying, her hair tangled, her wings still ragged and torn.

Then someone stepped in front of her, stopping her.

"What are you running from, flatscan?" Julian smiled. Green light flickered in his eyes, a clear threat.

"Get out of my way," Jay told him, her voice trembling.

"_Get out of my way,_" Julian mocked. "Don't you tell me what to do, bitch."

"Julian," Jay's hands trembled, her voice shaky but strong, "Julian, move."

The floor began to crack around Julian's feet, his eyes glowing brighter, his smile widening. "No."

Jay felt an invisible force push her across the corridor – students screamed, running in every direction – and push her up against the wood panelling. She could feel her nails gouging into the wood. _No, _she thought, _not again. _

She slid down to the ground, and as soon as her feet touched the floor, she ran at Julian, who laughed. The sound was cruel and mocking.

"Come and get me, flatscan!"

Then Jay caught his wrist and twisted. It wasn't hard, and normally Julian would barely have noticed such a weak attack, but then a horrible wet _snap_ echoed around the corridor.

Julian screamed. Jay didn't let go of his hand. More _snaps _echoed – one of the boy's legs was twisted, inverted, bloody splinters of bone sticking through the flesh all along the broken limb. Cuts opened all over his face and arms, and a bloody hole in his abdomen opened, spilling blood onto the floor. Jay dropped his hand and Julian collapsed to his knees, and people scrambled away from the pool of blood that was quickly spreading around him; more and more by the second.

Breathing in short gasps, shocked and frightened by what had happened, Jay backed away from him. Julian was breathing, but he wasn't doing much else either.

Jay stared at the crowds of students, blocking the corridor like air in an artery. Every face was frightened, backing away.

She turned and ran.

She didn't stop until she was out of the school.

* * *

Jay stopped under a tree, gasping for breath, pawing at the stitch in her side. She leant against the trunk, slid down it. She realised that she was sobbing.

"Jay?" A female voice, close but not too close. Ororo. She was searching for her. Jay took a deep breath.

The sounds around her, even the air, seemed to be pressuring her, pressing down on her, compressing her ribcage.

"I'm here!" she gasped, and began sobbing again.

Ororo hugged her, wrapping her arms around the girl's shoulders, careful to avoid any skin-to-skin contact. Jay sobbed into her shoulder as the woman shushed her and told her it would be fine.

"But I-I could have killed him," Jay whispered. "If I hadn't let go, I could have killed him!"

"You wouldn't, Jay. I know you wouldn't."

"A-And I can n-never touch a person e-ever again, not properly!" Jay shouted, letting go of Ororo, shoving the woman away. "A hug, a handshake… a kiss." The last word was a soft whisper. Jay's voice was hopeless.

"It'll be okay, Jay. Trust me. You can control it."

"Don't lie!" Jay screamed.

* * *

It was two days after Jay had broken down.

She was lying on her bed, pretending to read. The curtains were resolutely closed, her beautiful view of the grounds obscured.

"Jay?" Ororo again. She knocked.

"Go away."

"Jay, let me in. It's time for training."

* * *

The simulation was apocalyptic. Logan, Ororo, Marie, Warren, Bobby, Kitty, Peter and Jay were all in it.

It was team against team – Logan, Marie, Warren and Peter on one team and Ororo, Bobby, Kitty and Jay on the other. Jay gave Warren a dirty look as he spread his huge, thickly feathered white wings; her own twisted and twitched, useless.

"_Simulation starting. You may begin._" Said the AI voice from the ceiling. Logan and Ororo, grinning, gestured to their teams to start. Jay smiled. Her target was Warren, but Peter rushed at her first, metal – organic steel, she remembered – covering his skin in a shining, nigh-invulnerable coating.

Jay had no idea if her ability worked on metal, and Peter was a lot bigger and more skilled than she was, and much stronger.

She ran – Peter was surprisingly fast and agile for someone as well-muscled as he was, and Jay was forced to go up higher. A half-collapsed shell of a building – it looked like a block of flats, leaning sideways, fire leaping from inside it - provided a useful thing to climb. She grabbed onto a ledge and pulled herself up.

"Come get me!" she yelled, climbing higher. Jutting pieces of brick and protruding metal girder were handholds, and the windows were small enough for her to navigate easily, unless they were burning.

Her fingers were scraped and bloody by the time she reached a safe ledge to perch on, her legs aching and her head spinning from the height.

Then the building began to shake and shudder. Jay almost lost her balance, and ended up clinging to the ledge with both hands.

Fire leapt up hungrily beneath her, a roaring beast. In the centre of the inferno, she could see the silhouette of Peter, pushing at the side of the building, making it crack and crumble.

Jay swung precariously, trying to wrench herself back up onto the ledge, but she could feel the heat on her legs now, creeping up on her.

She screamed.

Her fingers gave way, and she fell, a head-over-heels screaming, disorienting fall. As a scream

A sudden wind pushed her to the right, making the fire flicker sporadically for a moment, then go out except for a few rebelling tongues of fire.

Jay continued to fall, but more slowly, the wind a gentle touch on her skin. Peter's arms were hard and cold, bruising.

"You're It." He grinned.

"Shut up." Jay scrambled out of his grip, and hit the ash-caked ground, the air rushing out of her lungs. Wheezing, struggling to breathe, Jay managed to get to her feet – only to see Peter – Colossus – on his knees, a burn from what looked like acid eating through the metal of his chest.

"Peter!" Kitty's scream echoed through the training room, shrill and terrified. Jay ran in the opposite direction as lightning lanced from Ororo's fingertips as she descended to examine the damage.

Marie – Rogue – grabbed her hand and pulled Jay towards her. Instantly, both girls began to twitch, their contact-oriented abilities reaping their harvest.

Jay's body arched back in a backwards C, her muscles convulsing, jerking wildly, her wings twitching and twisting, writhing on her back, her face quickly draining of blood and her breathing beginning to falter.

Rogue felt pain ripping through her, every bruise becoming a break or fracture, every scratch a gash, and a dozen bloody holes were torn through her abdomen.

The two girls collapsed back, crumpling into the ashes.

"_Miss Munroe,_" the AI addressed Ororo, "_Marie, Mr Nikolevitch and Miss Farley all require medical attention. The simulation will be paused._"

The two teams gathered around their fallen members as Ororo called Charles, Josh and Hank respectively.

* * *

**Thankyou for staying with this story! I am going on holiday to Dorset soon so I'll try to update before that. Please review! **

**Katie Trillion xx**


	6. Chapter 6

X Men Fanfiction It's All The Blood

* * *

**Author's Note: Some dream images inspired by _Pinnochio, _performed at the Rose Theatre, and Billie Eilish's _Lovely (music video). _Some dreams from my book manuscript. **

* * *

_How can you see into my eyes like open doors?_  
_Leading you down, into my core_  
_Where I've become so numb, without a soul_  
_My spirit's sleeping somewhere cold_  
_Until you find it there, and lead it, back, home_

_Wake me up inside_  
_Wake me up inside_  
_Call my name and save me from the dark_  
_Bid my blood to run_  
_Before I come undone_  
__Save me from the nothing I've become__

* * *

_Bring Me To Life, _by Evanescence

* * *

Chapter Six: **TROUBLED DREAMS**

* * *

_Jay backed away, trying to protect herself as her father advanced, whip raised. _

_"Come here!" he roared, brandishing it, spit flying from his lips. The darkness of her attic room seemed to be closing in, the rafters bending and twisting, curling like snakes, knotting together and blocking her escape. Jay tried to scream for help, she was suddenly unable to open her mouth. Terrified, she felt it, feeling jagged, angry stitches. They stretched and tore, leaving bloody rags where her lips had been. Blood dripped from her mouth. _

_"Come here!" her father shouted again. Jay felt something leathery wrap around her wrist. She looked down, at first thinking it was a whip. _

_It was a snake, with patterned brown-and-tan scales, laced through with black. It was a viper, with a arrowhead shaped head and bright yellow eyes. It hissed softly, slithering up her arm. Its skin was cool on hers. _

_Then more snakes, crawling out from the twisted rafters, sprouting from the wood like scaly plants, slithering around her limbs. Their bodies were inky black, opaque as obsidian, and their eyes glowed green. A similar sickly green glow laced in tendrils around their bodies. Soon she was helplessly pinned, wriggling but not making headway. _

_"Fly, little flatscan," they hissed. Then they dropped her. _

_Jay screamed as she fell. Suddenly Quentin was falling with her, but his green ethereal wings extended from his back. _

_"Help me!" Jay screamed. Green light flickered around her, slowing her fall. Then Jay reached out, and touched his hand. Quentin jerked, gashes appearing on his face, ripping themselves into his skin. One of his legs, mottled with bruises, twisted and and snapped, jagged splinters of bone protruding through the skin. His green energy-construct wings flickered and faded, letting him fall._

_"Quentin!" Jay yelled. He fell faster than she did, his limbs flailing, his face ashen, blood streaking his skin. _

_Jay didn't hit the ground; instead, long ropes wrapped around her limbs, her neck, and her joints, like a puppet; helpless. But the ends trailed across the floor, like dead white worms. She was inside a glass cube, and she looked up, hearing crackling noises from above her. The ceiling of the room was obscured by roiling grey-and-black __storm clouds, smothered with them. _

_"Hello?" she called. "Is anyone there?" Something blurred past the cube, like a figure of person, but running so fast that their limbs were almost invisible. _

_She walked over to one side of the glass cube, peering through it to the dark room around her, the walls seeming to stretch into infinity. Then a hand - pale, almost dead-looking - touched hers, on the opposite side of the glass. Jay leapt back, her nerves tingling. _

_The hand resolved into a small, pale figure, a child, dressed in black, standing quite still. It had had blonde hair, and was wearing a white half-mask, blue eyes staring through dark eye-holes. It still had its hand pressed against the glass. The figure took a step forward, and as its feet touched the ground, lights flickered on, blindingly bright, revealing crowds of the figures, each one either with bobbed or cropped blonde hair; little girls and boys, all with their faces hidden._

_They touched the glass walls of the cube, the material becoming jelly-like under their fingers. They began to struggle through it, limbs flailing and fighting, their white masks gleaming like polished ivory. Soon more than half of them were through, still advancing._

_They touched the trailing rope, picking it up, pulling. Jay jerked, her limbs pulled in every direction, leaving her spread-eagled. The children were more coordinated now, moving with purpose, pulling and twisting. Jay felt her limbs move, dancing, dancing to the children's command. A bubble of laughter burst out of each child's mouth, high and mad. Then they pulled every rope taught and Jay screamed as pain lanced through her limbs. _

_They were going to rip her apart._

_"Jay!" a voice shouted. The masked children jerked, and Jay screamed again. The figure of Charles in his wheelchair resolved from the shadows in one corner. He advanced through the mob of children, brushing them aside with a thought. "Jay, what is this?"_

_"I-I don't know." The ropes were tangled around her limbs, but she struggled free. Then the dream twisted again, warping into something monstrous. _

_Jay saw the two bodies, hanging from the ceiling fans, the blood-caked ropes creaking and twisting under the weight of the hanging flesh. There was one man and one woman, both dark-skinned. Blood dripped onto the floor, beating out a steady rhythm on the dusty wooden boards. _

_The ropes creaked again as the bodies turned, and Jay very nearly screamed as the woman turned to face her. The woman's face was silent and peaceful and frightening in its serene sleeping countenance. She'd definitely been dead when she'd been strung up, then. Otherwise... she would look a lot worse; her eyes would be popping at the very least, and her face would be purple with lack of oxygen. _

_As it was, the woman looked almost normal. Her hands were hanging limply by her sides, and there were two deep stab wounds in her chest and a ragged scarlet gash in her neck, as though her killer had made very sure that she was dead. It was the same for the man. _

_And in the corner, on her knees and weeping, was a teenage girl. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry -" Then a cold smile spread over her features._

_"I'm not sorry."_

_She walked towards the hanging bodies, her cold smile like ice. She licked the blood from the woman's cheek, smiled again._

_Then the girl dipped a finger into the pool of blood on the floor, walked over to a cracked mirror hanging lopsidedly on the wall, and wrote: '_IT WAS ME._' in neat capitals, which quickly began to dribble scarlet down the mirror, until the letters were nearly illegible. _

_The girl's icy smile remained on her face, not cracking, not yet. _

_The girl bent down, picked up the knife and wiped it fastidiously clean, before tucking the now bloodstained rag into her pocket. She could get rid of it later. _

_She left the room._

* * *

_"Jay! Jay, listen to me! This isn't real! It's your damned subconscious!" _Charles stared down at Jay's comatose body, his brow furrowed in concentration. She hadn't woken up for the last three days, although Rogue was healed in the space of a half-hour by Josh. Jay was lying in Hank's lab on a hospital bed, an oxygen cannula in her nose, and a maze of other tubing winding from every orifice. "No! She's gone again. I don't understand where the dreams are coming from."

"Why should you, Charles?" A female voice threaded through the room, followed by its owner - the infamous, beautiful blonde-haired Emma Frost, formerly the White Queen of the Hellfire Club, striding with her usual confident air, her clothing as revealing as possible and her white lipstick and eyeshadow immaculate. "Her marvellous visions are gifts from me."

* * *

_Jay found herself walking through the deserted rooms of a dark mansion. The entire place was swamped in thick shadow, the darkness creeping up the walls and across ceilings, accumulating in corners like dust. _

_Jay walked up a staircase and through a child's playroom, filled with toys scattered in rune-like patterns across the floor. In the corner, an ornately painted rocking horse, tied about with intricately knotted leather reins, loomed out of the dark in ghastly silhouette for second, then seemed to rock its way into the faint light from the open door. The horse's wide, frozen glass eyes reflected the light and Jay's face back at her, and its eyes seemed to roll madly as it rocked slowly in eerie silence, throwing huge, threatening shadows across the wall. _

_Jay walked on, through the room, then through a second door that glided on silent hinges. Her footsteps were quiet, muted, muffled, but her breathing was loud and harsh in the silence. She paused at the oak face of another door, running her hand over the doorknob, the metal cold under her fingers, unwelcome._

_Suddenly, the great bass tolling of a bell rolled through the house, the one long note slow and mournful as a funeral hymn. _

_Jay shivered. _

_The bell tolled again, and the walls seemed to shudder to the orchestrations of the sound. The bell tolled once more, and the shadows crept, cat-like, across the room, watchful, listening in. _

_In front of Jay, the door swung open. In the darkened room, a huge painting took up most of one wall, the frame reaching nearly to the ceiling._

_Despite the low light, Jay could see the painting with perfect clarity. _

_The painting depicted a young girl, maybe fourteen or fifteen, sitting straight-backed with her hands clasped in front of her, gazing out at the onlooker with calculating dark eyes, her gaze serious and serene like she knew everything in the world. _

_Her light brown hair just brushed her shoulders and there was a tiny crucifix pendant hanging on a chain around her neck. _

_The background of the painting was plain dark wood panelling - she might have been sitting in a church pew. The girl was wearing a white silk dress with skirts that reached her ankles and pooled around her in folds; one dainty foot, enclosed in a white shoe, peeked modestly out from under her skirts, pure and innocent against the red carpet at her feet. The painting was so convincingly real that the girl looked as though she were about to speak. _

_Jay met the painted eyes, and they stared back at her - she felt the soft, hesitant touch of a hand on his shoulder - she turned - _

_And the dream changed. _

_Jay was standing at one end of a long hall, as dark and shadowy as the rooms. The dark walls were alternated by windows and full-length mirrors; the tall windows were covered by blinds and the mirrors by sheets of black silk that rippled and whispered, fold against fold, as Jay entered. _

_Jay reached out to touch the silk - it felt real enough under her hand, cool and smooth like reptile scales. The fabric rippled like dark water. _

_Then something reached out back at her, pushing against the fabric. It was a hand, a human hand, pale and very white against the darkness. Before Jay could jump back, it grasped her wrist._

_More hands emerged from the mirrors, pushing aside the silk. Jay felt their cold touch on her face and arms - she could feel herself being dragged down - _

_Then, just as suddenly as they appeared, the hands vanished. Jay was back in the darkened hall, alone. She shivered again._

_Then, in front of her, the girl from the painting formed, but she wasn't wearing the white dress and she no longer looked serious and serene. Then the outline of her face wavered like it was underwater, and she was someone else entirely. _

_A girl with short, golden hair was kneeling on the ground, her trembling arms raised above her head, her face twisted in pain. She was holding something, and Jay realised as it slowly formed above her that it was a little like a huge block of concrete or stone, but slightly different. From the underside of the greyish block, the part that the girl was holding, long, sharp spikes were slowly unsheathing, shining with a dull radiance in the muted light, piercing her back and shoulders in a dozen places._

_Blood was running down her back and the back of her shirt was stained scarlet; she looked nearly dead already._

_"Help me run away," she whispered, her voice a dying rasp in her throat, barely audible through the creak-crack of the stone shifting above her, like a mountain grinding against the earth, an inexorable force. Her arms trembled again and her grip shifted, blood slick and slippery on her fingers. "Please help me - "_

_Jay realised that the girl was literally pinned to the stone - one spike was driven all the way through her left hand, brutally crushing the bones and sending blood trickling down her arm. She was unable to escape. _

_In the mirror, barely visible through the thick layer of silk, a tiny human figure was hanging, suspended, on strings. _

_Jay backed away, for some reason she didn't want to help, didn't want to go near the dying girl. _

_"Please," she whispered again. More blood ran down her back, and Jay could see a longer spike slowly descending from the stone directly over her, clearly intending to pierce her straight through the centre of her back and sever her spine in one lethal movement. The girl didn't seem to notice, just gritted her teeth and held onto the stone. She was brave, there was no doubt about that. "Help me run away."_

_Jay felt the cold glass of a mirror against his back, and a bead of sweat trickled down __her neck. She couldn't back away any further. _

_The spike was less than ten centimetres from the girl's back now. _

_"Can't you move?"_

_She shook her head. Jay knew that if she shifted even an inch, the stone would drop and she would be crushed. _

_She looked at her. Her arms trembled again, her muscles fluttering. The light in her eyes was going out. The spike was only two centimetres from her back now. _

_"I-I'm Kathy." _

_"Jay. I'm Jay." _

_Then Julian was there, green light emanating from his body, obliterating anything and everything in his path. Cain was by his side, loping to the dead girl, touching her face with his long fingers, freezing her face all except for her wide eyes. He closed them with an icy finger and a few seconds later bloody spears of ice erupted from Kathy's closed eyelids. _

_Cain laughed, high and cold. _

_Julian strode to where Jay stood, frozen by terror. "Good afternoon, flatscan," he said. "Seems you'll be wanting a taste of your own medicine." He snapped his fingers, and green light shimmered around him and Jay. Then he blinked. _

_Jay legs twisted and snapped. Bloody, jagged splinters of bone slashed through the skin. She gritted her teeth against the scream that was building in her lungs. Julian blinked again, and Jay screamed this time - her shoulder was dislocated, the other arm lying halfway across the room. She fell to the ground, her breathing coming in short, wheezing sporadic gasps of pain and shock, and she clutched at the stump of her arm, blood trickling through her fingers. _

_"You deserved that, flatscan," Julian whispered, sadistic joy gleaming in his eyes. His right hand clenched into a fist and Jay felt an impact drive into her chest, propelling her back. Her chest exploded with pain, and she tried to count how many ribs had been broken. _

_"Julian -" she whispered. The pain was too much now, overwhelming her. Black began to creep insidiously to the edges of her vision. "Julian, please -" _

_Then Julian's fist opened again, his fingers crooked, claw-like. He grinned, more green light flickering in his eyes like fire. "Be quiet." Three deep gashes were slashed into Jay's face, one so deep that it opened up her cheek. _

_Jay moaned softly. Julian's smile became wider. His eyes were pure green now, the light spilling from his sockets. He blinked, once, and then his ability tore the wings from Jay's back. _

* * *

Jay gasped, and her eyes opened.

Charles was sitting beside her, his kind face stormy. Emma Frost was standing next to him, her marble-perfect features smug. "See anything interesting, girl?" she asked, her blue eyes sharp.

Jay was shivering, her eyes fearful, her face covered in sweat. "Kathy..." she murmured. "Is there a girl called Kathy in the school?"

Charles stared at her, astonished. "We found her yesterday, late last night. How can you already know?"

* * *

**Thankyou for reading! Please review!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


	7. Chapter 7

X-Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

* * *

**Author's Note: Sorry for not updating, I have had school and I don't know when I'll be able to update again. Please enjoy!**

* * *

_Sunsets, sunrises_  
_Living the dream, watching the leaves_  
_Changing the seasons_  
_Some nights I think of you_  
_Reliving the past, wishing it'd last_  
_Wishing and dreaming_

_Seasons, they will change_  
_Life will make you grow_  
_Death can make you hard, hard, hard_  
_Everything is temporary_  
_Everything will slide_  
_Love will never die, die, die_

_Birds, _by Imagine Dragons

* * *

**Chapter Seven: **The Girl In Room Five

* * *

"Who's Kathy?" Jay sat up sharply, but her head span and she winced. A migraine was beginning in her skull, wrapping a band of searing pain around her head.

Charles started forwards, wheeling himself closer. "Jay? Are you alright?"

"Headache," Jay mumbled. She rubbed her forehead irritably.

Emma Frost was leaning languidly against the wall, her white cloak falling in soft folds around her. Her blonde hair rippled around her face as she stared at Jay with her piercing blue eyes. She clasped her long-fingered hands in front of her, her red lips parting in a smile.

Jay stared back at her. "Why are you looking at me?"

Emma raised an eyebrow. "You're pathetic, girl. Utterly pathetic. You are focused so inwardly that you fail to see others. But you interest me, all the same."

Jay glared at her.

"You should meet Kathy," Emma continued. "You would be interesting to her as well." She beckoned for Jay to get up.

Charles put a hand on Jay's shoulder. "You're not strong enough, Jay. It's better if you stay here for a while."

Jay brushed his hand away, and got out of bed, and although her legs were stiff and her head swam even more, she managed to stand. The pain in her wings had faded to a dull ache. She looked at Emma, grudgingly accepting that the woman knew this place better than she did.

"Do you know if there's anywhere I can shower?"

Emma nodded and gestured for Jay to follow her out of the room.

A few minutes later, Jay relaxed in the hot water, running her fingers through her hair to wash the shampoo out.

She stepped out the shower, before wrapping herself in a towel and leaving to dry her hair. When she was done, she dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and headed back to Charles and Emma.

Awkward silence filled the room. Emma and Charles clearly hadn't said a word while the last half an hour had elapsed.

"Hey."

* * *

Charles wheeled himself towards the door, beckoning to Jay to follow. "Come with me. Kathy wants to see you."

They walked along a corridor lined with dark wooden doors, with Charles explaining as they went.

"Kathy's ability is that she can smell emotions, personalities and, to some extent, appearances."

Jay nodded.

"I'm afraid that the experience can be a bit," Charles paused, searching for the right word, "unsettling the first time."

The dark doors stood like gloomy sentinels on one side of the corridor, solid and ominous-looking. They were numbered with gold Roman numerals, dull and tarnished. How long had this place been left for? Darkness clung to the corners of the ceiling like black spiderwebs, and the skittering of mice or rats could be heard behind the skirting boards. Spiders had woven intricate silken creations of web between the wall and the doors. Between the dusty doors, the walls were a dull grey.

Charles stopped at a door marked 'V' and knocked gently.

"Kathy?"

"Charles?" A girl's voice answered. Her voice was so soft that it barely carried through the door.

"Can we come in? Jay's here. She wants to see you."

"Come in, Charles."

Charles pushed open the heavy wooden door and wheeled himself inside. Jay followed, icy apprehension creeping into her veins.

The room was sparse; the walls were painted white, and a single bed with a pale blue cover was on the left side, and a small table with a lamp on it was set beside it. A few books were piled on the table – fantasy mostly, but Jay spotted a copy of _Divergent _by Veronica Roth teetering on the edge of the table-top. There was a second door leading to a bathroom, but other than that the room was empty.

Sitting up on the bed, wearing Harry Potter pyjamas that were a size too small, was a girl, her head bowed.

She was so pale she seemed to shine, so pale that it could only be a mutation. The golden colour of her feathery hair was accentuated by the pallor of her skin; it was very short, as though it had just started to grow back after being shorn almost to the scalp.

"Hello," she said, in her soft quavering voice. She raised her head. Jay gasped. Where there should have been blue eyes, there were two expanses of white skin; thin and papery. Scars surrounded her sockets in two rough circles – clearly the skin had been stitched over her eyes in the first place. Kathy turned towards Jay, and Jay shivered. The way the girl seemed to stare without seeing was a little unnerving.

"Good morning, Kathy," Charles said. Kathy's head flicked around in the direction of his voice.

"Good morning, Charles," she said, in the same unchanging soft voice. She sniffed the air. "Jay is with you," she said. "I smelled her on your way in." She turned to Jay. "You are shocked by me," she told Jay. "Shocked, but not disgusted. I like that in a person. Most people are disgusted."

"I'm sorry."

Kathy fiddled with her hands, and sniffed the air again.

"You have wings," she continued, "but there is something odd about them. They smell of blood and twisted flesh. What happened to you? You smell… damaged. Sweet as well, but it's the sweetness of decay."

Jay bit her lip. She hadn't counted on the state of her wings being mentioned so soon. The worry clogged up her throat, and she spat the words out. "I… When I first manifested, my dad… he didn't take it very well."

"And?"

Jay threw a _Please goddamn help me _look at Charles. Charles shrugged, still hanging near the door, respecting personal space.

Jay dragged a chair over, a little closer to the bed, and sat down. "He… I guess he just overreacted. He put a harness on me... it stopped my wings from developing properly. I can't fly – I can't –" Jay sucked in a breath, trying to control herself. She would not cry. She was not going to cry – _damn. _

Kathy shuffled forwards, reaching out with one pale hand to cup the side of Jay's face. Warm, salty tears ran down her hand, and she drew it back.

"Sorry – I shouldn't be –"

"It's okay," Kathy said, brushing her wet fingers over her lips, tasting the salt. "It's okay to cry, Jay. Here." She put her hand on Jay's, exploring what it felt like. You could learn a lot about a person from their hands. Jay's fingers were warmer than her tears. Kathy discovered that the girl bit her nails, and that there were faint scars on the underside of her arm.

"When I was young," Kathy said, "The people who took me would rip me apart over and over and put me back together again. They had my blood in vials and my skin stretched on the walls. It happened so many times it stopped hurting. They… they were the ones who closed my eyes."

Jay wiped her eyes. "I- I'm sorry."

Kathy smiled faintly, but she gripped Jay's hand tighter. "People say 'It's good to cry. That way you feel better.' Sometimes I feel like crying. I can't see what people look like. I can't see if a place is beautiful or ugly. I can't see if you're smiling or crying or frowning." The girl's voice broke as she neared the end of her speech, and Jay could tell that she wanted to cry.

She got up from her chair and sat next to her on the bed, wrapping her arm around Kathy's skinny shoulders. The girl buried her face in Jay's shoulder, drinking in the scent of flowers and clean cotton. Jay stroked her feathery hair gently, as though she was a small child.

"It's okay," Jay whispered. "It'll be okay. Trust me."

* * *

**So, sorry for the delay and the shortness of the chapter. I had a tonne of homework, so this was just bonding and that, hope you liked it! Thankyou for reading, and please review!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


	8. Chapter 8

X Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

* * *

**Warning: This chapter contains descriptions of abuse. If you are uncomfortable with reading this, please skip the section in italics with bold brackets [ ] around it.**

* * *

_I've been watching you  
For some time  
Can't stop staring  
At those oceans eyes  
Burning cities  
And napalm skies  
Fifteen flares inside those ocean eyes  
Your ocean eyes_

_No fair  
You really know how to make me cry  
When you gimme those ocean eyes  
I'm scared  
I've never fallen from quite this high  
Falling into your ocean eyes  
Those ocean eyes_

_Ocean Eyes_, by Bille Eilish

* * *

Chapter Eight: **Hurt Inside**

* * *

Jay screamed. She scrambled away from Kathy, almost falling. For a few terrible seconds, for no more than a minute, all caution and all thought of her deadly touch had been driven from her mind. She had looked down – and what greeted her eyes was blood, trickling and dripping over the bed. The lower part of Kathy's leg was gone, torn away, ripped from her body.

But that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was that Kathy didn't scream or cry out; she barely seemed to notice that her leg was gone from the knee down. Then a little gasp escaped her lips. Her hands went to the places where her eyes had been, gingerly touching them.

There were long scratches dug into the skin, crusted red and yellow with blood and pus; they were clearly infected. The meticulous stitches around her eyes were ripped and clawed at, almost torn out of the skin. Some of the scratches were so deep that Jay could see thin slivers of Kathy's eyes, milky and shrivelled, deprived of moisture and light for what seemed like aeons.

A choked sob escaped Kathy's mouth. Her hands were still hovering over the familiar gashes where she had clawed at her eyes and ripped at the stitches in desperation.

"Jay…" she whispered. "W-what happened?" Her breathing came in fast, shocked, shivering gasps.

"I- " Jay felt as though ice had been injected into her veins. She wanted to run, to run away as far and as fast as she could. Her feet obeyed her and she the door slammed behind her with all the finality of a funeral bell.

* * *

"Jay?" Kathy whispered again. She sniffed. "She's gone." Her voice was very soft, shivering like a storm-tossed snowflake.

"Kathy?" Charles said, wheeling himself closer. He could sense the turmoil and the pain in the girl's tormented mind, and tried to soothe her. Her head was bowed and her strange, dry sobs punctuated the silence. Kathy's hands clenched and relaxed, and she crossed and uncrossed her legs restlessly.

"I'll get Josh," Charles said. "He can repair your leg."

Kathy's head flicked up. "Don't leave me here alone."

"I won't." Charles probed a little into her mind, not enough that she would feel it, but enough to see her surface thoughts, which leaked from people anyway. He saw darkness and fear, and a tiny cramped room with dark walls.

Kathy winced. "Don't – do that."

Charles blinked. Normally people didn't sense him unless they made an effort or were psychic like him. "Sorry." He called to Josh, apologising a second time for waking him up.

The door opened again. Kathy flinched at the sound, even though it was much quieter than the reverberating slam of Jay's exit. She sniffed. "You healed Jay," she said. "I can smell her on you."

Josh jumped. His metallic skin glittered softly. "Yes, I did."

Kathy sniffed again. "Gold skin. On a healer?"

"It was an accident. I… yeah." Josh walked forwards. "Just let me heal your leg and… dear Lord." Kathy had raised her head at his approaching footsteps. She inhaled with a little gasp and ducked her head.

"I-I'm sorry." Josh said. "Here –" in the space of a few minutes, Kathy's leg was whole again.

Kathy sniffed, reflexively holding back imaginary tears. Blood dripped, slowly congealing, from the deep scratches that she had clawed into her eyes. "Don't – don't worry about it."

"Here," Josh said again, laying his hand gently on the side of her face. The gashes began to close, and the expanse of pale skin that covered her eyes was complete. Halfway through, Kathy's hand came up, touching his wrist as if to try and stop him, as though she didn't want to lose even the ghost of vision.

"There," Josh said. "Okay?"

Kathy nodded. She licked her lips. Her hands were trembling slightly.

"Hey. Are you… alright?"

"Of course I'm not alright!" Kathy screamed. "Do I look like I'm alright?" Both Josh and Charles jerked in shock.

_Stay out of this, _Charles told Josh. The boy hurried from the room.

* * *

Jay ran, her face rapidly becoming streaked and blotchy with tears. Her wings were a dead weight, dragging at her.

"What are you running from?" Jay stopped. Someone was in front of her – a teenage boy with dyed silver hair, a Pink Floyd T-shirt and black jeans. He stared at her.

"You're the speedster boy," Jay blurted. "I saw you on my first day."

"You haven't answered my question," he answered. "And my name's Peter, not _speedster boy._"

"I… I don't have to tell you." Jay said. The boy grinned. "Alright," he told her. "Keep running. And, by the way, someone's following you." Then he was gone, racing back towards the school.

Jay kept running, across the grounds to a far corner. A sycamore tree dappled the grass with pools of shadow. She stopped, feeling like her heart was going to squirm up her sternum and into her throat.

Even though the sun was high overhead, she felt strangely cold.

_Cold…_ as though there were ice crystals gathering on her skin, inside her veins. Jay took a deep breath.

"Hello, Cain. How long have you been hiding out here?"

Cain's white hair stood out sharply against the green of the leaves and grass, and he seemed to have grown taller. His face was thin and gaunt now, deep hollows in his cheeks and bruise-like circles under his eyes. He was nothing like the cruel, confident sidekick that Julian had employed.

"The last few days." Cain's voice was soft, and the icy edge to his consonants had melted away. His smile was gone as well, and the blue of his eyes seemed duller.

"From Julian." It wasn't a question. Cain nodded.

"Clint comes and brings me meals. I… think I'm safe for now." His hand tapped on the side of his leg nervously, remembering how the bones and flesh had twisted until they cracked and ripped. How he'd screamed.

He blinked, immersing himself in comforting darkness. The dark was his friend. He used – **[**_Cain used to hide in the attic, huddled in a dusty black corner, an old tarpaulin pulled over him so that nobody could see him. He hadn't moved. At some point he had fallen asleep, and woke up to a spider dangling over his face, black eyes glittering and mandibles snapping open and closed. _

_Cain couldn't remember how many times he had hidden up here before; maybe ever since his mother had started drinking again. _

_This time, he remembered, he had gone downstairs as there had been silence for some time. Cain hoped that she was asleep. _

_His mother was lolling on the sagging sofa, her dirty blonde hair splayed over her face. Lying on its side on the floor was a bottle, a dribble of brown liquid soaking into the carpet from its neck. It was the first of many. _

"_Cain," she said, her voice slurred. "Get me another bottle."_

"_There's no more in the fridge, Mum," Cain said. This was his usual excuse. His mum usually couldn't be bothered to get up anyway. _

_Then she climbed to her feet, using the arm of the sofa for support. Swaying a little, her feet miraculously missing the mulch of empty bottles on the floor, she made her way to the kitchen._

_Cain felt fear flood him – if she found out he'd lied about the alcohol – should he hide, or run? Go back up to the attic? Run from the house?_

_But it was too late. She was already back, swaying more with every second. She was clutching another bottle, and her face – already red – was filled with anger. There was a muscle jumping by the corner of her left eye. _

"_You lied." She said, simply. She put the bottle down with the exaggerated care of a drunk, and advanced towards Cain. _

_Cain was rooted to the spot with fear, unable to run or even scream. He felt as though his insides were tearing themselves apart. _

"_Mum –" he managed to say, choking out the syllable. "Mum –" _

_Then she hit him across the face. Cain stumbled backwards, tripped and fell. He caught himself on his hands and screamed as shard of broken glass stabbed at his palms, blood seeping across the floor. He struggled into a kneeling position, but if he tried to push himself to he feet, it would just drive the glass deeper into his hands. His breathing was coming in short, shocked gasps. _

_Without warning, she kicked him in the chest, again and again. Cain felt something crack, then white-hot pain eclipsed the gashes on his hands. When she kicked him once more, he curled up on top of the broken bottles, feeling more shards of glass digging into his back. _

_He coughed, and something hot and wet trickled down his chin. _

"_Don't lie to me again," said his mum, sitting back down on the sofa and opening her bottle. "Do you hear me?"_

_Cain didn't have the strength to nod. His vision was swirling black and red. Her foot came down on his upper arm, pressing it into the mulch of glass and spilt beer. Sharp edges sliced at his skin – on his shoulder, wrist, the back of his neck. _

"_Do you hear me?" she said, louder._

_Cain nodded once, glass scratching at his skin, before he blacked out._**]**

* * *

Kathy had been talking for the last few minutes, words pouring out of her mouth in a flood of syllables, sometimes a jagged, angry red, sobbing washed-out blue and once monotone, monochrome grey.

"Is she going to come back, Charles?"

Charles remembered the twisting emotions – terror, denial, self-hate, and crashing waves of guilt – that had flooded Jay's mind as she'd run from the room.

"I'm not sure," he said. "We'll have to find her… what if she's not in school at all?"

"Jay wouldn't do that," Kathy whispered. "She's too scared that her father might find her if she did. She has to be hiding."

Charles wheeled himself closer, and held out his hand. "Do you want to help me look?"

She nodded. Taking his hand, Kathy stood up, allowing herself to be led towards the door. She could smell the dust and cobwebs, hear the skittering and scratching of mice in the walls. When her feet came down on the carpet, she tasted the plumes of dust motes on the air.

They walked in silence for a while, until the smells changed.

"We're outside, aren't we?" Kathy could smell the grass, and the kids and teenagers running around. She could hear the soft chuckle of a stream, the flustered flapping of birds as they fussed about their nests. A myriad of different emotions and abilities bombarded her in seconds – there were too many people, too many.

"Charles –" she said, her voice soft. Charles turned to look at her, sensing the fear and the overwhelming, drowning sensation she was feeling.

"Do you want to go back inside, Kathy?"

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself. She tried to block out the people around her – she could smell their mingling shock, curiosity, fear and disgust at seeing her for the first time. Bitterness welled up inside her.

"No," she said. "We need to find Jay."

* * *

"Cain?"

Cain sucked in a breath.

"Cain, are you okay? You spaced out for a second."

He was leaning against the tree, his limbs trembling. Tentacles of blue ice had spread from his shivering fingers and up the trunk of the tree, freezing the leaves into delicate, frosted sculptures.

"I – yeah, I'm fine." He could tell Jay didn't believe him. His voice had shook on the word _fine_.

Jay stared at him. Cain had never realised to piercing her yellow eyes could be. "Talk to me," she said. "I hate you, but you're not right in the head, Cain. Tell me what's wrong."

"Everything!" he shouted. Ice covered the ground as well now, inexorably creeping up the trunks of more trees.

Jay could hear the curious shouts of people on the other side of the field. "Cain," she said, allowing fear to infect her voice. "Cain, stop, or he'll notice. Julian. And he won't be so forgiving this time."

The ice began to recede. Cain's chest was rising and falling rapidly. He tried to control it, but memories burst unbidden into his head again.

"_Mum, what are you doing? Mum –" _

"Go away!" he shouted, not at Jay, at himself. "Go away and leave me alone!" He sank to his knees, clutching his head. The ice had been steadily melting, but now it was beginning to spread again. Jay took a step back.

"What's going on?" A girl's voice said. Jay turned around. An Asian girl a little younger than she was, accompanied a red-haired, pale-skinned boy were standing there, watching.

"Hisako," said the boy, his eyes on the ice that was approaching his toes, "It's not safe to be here. We should get the professor."

The girl, Hisako, ignored him. She took a step forwards. "You're the new girl, Jay, aren't you? Julian's latest punching bag."

Jay nodded, anger flaring in her eyes.

"Hisako –" the boy said again.

"Shut up, Edward! Fly off to somewhere else, why don't you?"

Edward glared at her, then concentrated. He rose off the ground, unsupported, and disappeared back the way he had come.

Jay's mouth set into a hard line. Her scarred wings twitched. "Please go away, Hisako," she said. "This is something Cain has to deal with alone."

Hisako frowned at her, but left anyway. Jay knew that she was going to tell everyone she met that Cain had finally lost it.

"Cain?" she said again.

"I'm – I'm good." He had managed to stand up at least. "I'm sorry. It's just… I had a bad childhood as well."

Jay nodded. "I guess I get that." She knew that she couldn't force him to talk, and that it was miracle that he had even said those few sentences. "I'm sorry." Jay said.

"Don't be. She's dead now."

"She?" Jay internally cursed herself. She shouldn't be prompting Cain to continue, this was his choice. She saw his right hand curl into a fist.

"My mum." His voice was tight, like a string pulled taut and about to snap. "I… can't talk about her. Please don't say anything."

Jay nodded. She hoped she understood.

* * *

**Thankyou for reading! Please review!**

**Katie Trillion xx**


	9. Chapter 9

X Men Fanfiction: It's All In The Blood

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**Author's Note: I already ship my lovely characters (I must think of a ship name – Jathy sounds stupid, so please think of a better one and tell me!) Also sorry for the wait – life happens, and I've been working hard on my book manuscript, preparing to send it off to publishers.**

* * *

_I want to hide the truth  
I want to shelter you  
But with the beast inside  
There's nowhere we can hide_

_When you feel my heat  
Look into my eyes  
It's where my demons hide  
It's where my demons hide  
Don't get too close  
It's dark inside  
It's where my demons hide  
It's where my demons hide_

_Demons, _by Imagine Dragons

* * *

Chapter Nine: **The Scent of Souls**

* * *

"Jay!" Kathy yelled. She could smell her, under the overwhelming stink of ice and fear. She could smell Cain as well – a nexus of internal pain and ice.

"Kathy, tell me what's going on," Charles said urgently, "I can't differentiate between thoughts, there's so much pain there everything is blurred."

"Jay's there, but it's not her who's in pain – she feels pity, but it's the… icy boy who is hurting." Kathy said. It was hard to even smell Jay, but she couldn't smell blood or metal, just ice and fear. "No one's in… physical pain, though."

Charles bit his lip. He'd known that Cain had experienced some sort of trauma, but he'd never wished to know exactly what it was. Now, the boy was unconsciously projecting his own aura of pain and fear, and the ghosts of memories were crawling to the surface.

"Come on," he said, and didn't elaborate on what they would be doing once they got to Jay and Cain.

"Cain…"

Cain could hear Jay, but in his head the voice was twisted into something monstrous – his own name, screamed along with rampant profanity by his mother.

_I wish I'd never had you… I wish you'd just die… I hate you, stupid useless _****** _I f_*****_g hate you…_

He felt like he was collapsing inside, as though his very atoms were disintegrating into dust – everything he'd done felt to wrong, so perverted, like something – something his mother would do…

Cain remembered smiling as blood flowed over his fingertips, the way ice expanded inside veins and burst capillaries, and froze hearts – recalling his own pleasure, he felt nauseated.

He heard a scream tear from his lips and didn't care, felt his legs give way, the burst of pain through his legs as he hit the layer of ice felt distant, and everything that hurt inside him felt like battling a tumour – but tumours are made of you, made of your own flesh and blood.

Cain felt like that – fighting what he was, fighting himself.

He couldn't lose – he _couldn't _–

* * *

Jay knew that she shouldn't try to help. It wasn't that she was being spiteful, rather that she knew that Cain had to deal with this by himself.

She watched him, his tall, gaunt figure folded into a pitiable ball, curled in on himself, trying to protect himself against someone who wasn't there.

Finally she walked over to him, slipping a little on the ice still spreading across the ground, and knelt down next to him.

"Cain…" she whispered, "Cain, can you hear me?" Then, with a little more sarcasm, "Hell-o? Anybody in there?"

Cain was rocking back and forth, sobbing quietly. Jay leant closer to see what he was whispering.

"End it," Cain whispered. He was shivering, and the ice gathering and cracking all around him had covered him in many bleeding scratches. "Just end it."

"No _way_!" Jay shouted. "That's not happening, Cain! I'm not going to kill you if you haven't got the guts to do it yourself!"

Jay instantly regretted what she'd blurted out. Cain raised his head and stared at her, and Jay saw that there was a mad, determined light in his tortured blue eyes. "I have, Jay," he whispered, his voice almost a snarl. "I _have_ got the guts to do it myself. I should've done it a long time ago."

Cain put a hand to the back of his head and the other to the side of his neck. Ice was gathering on his fingertips, and Jay knew what he was going to do in a sudden burst of horror – he was going to spear through his brain and arteries simultaneously.

Jay instinctively jerked forwards, grabbing his wrist to stop him, not realising in the moment what she was doing.

The thin cuts all over Cain's face and arms widened, deepening, slashing great red wounds into his flesh. The boy screamed, his hand still clamped to the back of his head, ice gathering around his fingertips, reacting to his pain.

Ice shot through his skull, punching through the bone and spearing into the brain, icicles stabbing through his eyes.

Cain slumped to the ground. Beneath his body, the ice began to melt in the warm sun even as blood spread across it.

Jay felt a sudden stab of cold through her body – shock and terror overwhelmed her, denial and pain thundering in her bloodstream. Her breathing became erratic and ragged, as though her throat was closing up – _not again, it couldn't be her fault, please God, not again –_

Black was crowding her vision until all she could see were Cain's icy eyes, staring sightlessly up at her.

* * *

Charles gasped, his body tensing. Kathy blinked in shock.

"He's dead," she whispered. "The ice boy is dead." She stopped walking. She could smell Jay's fear, but it was indirect as to what it was for.

"Charles?" she said. The stench of fear wasn't just from Jay. Then, a little louder, she asked, "Charles? Are you… alright?"

Charles's hands were clutching the arms of his wheelchair so hard that his knuckles were white, and he was trembling. Kathy could smell his fear and the hammer blows of shock that were thumping in his brain.

He took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to steady himself. Kathy could smell the salty scent of tears and grief.

"Just… give me a moment, Kathy," he said softly.

"I'm sorry," Kathy whispered. "Sometimes… it's a shock for me too. Death." She could smell it in the air already, even though many trees still separated her and the body.

Charles stiffened a little, nodding silently. He understood that Kathy wasn't ready to talk about how she had smelled death in the first place. He continued wheeling himself towards the thicket of trees, but there was even more urgency even as the wheels dragged in the grass. Both Charles and Kathy could sense the surge of emotions from Jay.

When they arrived in the trees, they found Jay sitting as far away from Cain's body as she could get, cross-legged and facing away from them. Her entire body was shaking, but her hair concealed her face.

"Jay?" Kathy said. Charles stayed where he was while Kathy tentatively towards Jay, sensing the nervousness and slight queasiness within her – what should she do? She'd never been in this situation before – how should she comfort Jay?

Kathy gulped. She could feel her hands trembling. "Jay?" she repeated, but quieter, almost a whisper.

Jay didn't respond.

"Jay? C-Can you talk to me? It's Kathy," she added.

Jay didn't turn around, but her tear-choked voice was so soft that Kathy had to walk even closer to hear her.

"I-I'm sorry," Jay whispered. "It's – Cain – it's my fault."

Kathy heard an edge of unexpected sternness in her words. Indignance pulsed through her, overriding the shock lingering in her bones. "It isn't your fault, Jay! Don't you dare say that!"

"But it is!" Jay's voice was a raw screech. She jumped to her feet, her body still trembling, her face a wreck. Her amber eyes were swollen and reddened from weeping, and there were deep scratches in her arms, obviously self-inflicted. Kathy glanced quickly at Cain's corpse and realised that the scratches corresponded to the deep slashes in Cain's arms and face.

Jay staggered backwards, stumbling, catching herself on her hands and managing not to fall. Kathy ran to her, grabbed her shoulders, and yanked her up again. "Listen to me, Jay! This is not your fault! It was an accident!"

Jay's eyes flashed. Anger pushed her grief into a temporary second place. She shoved Kathy away from her and stood up. "Fine. It wasn't my fault. Happy?"

"Jay!" Charles's voice was sharp with reprimand. "There is a dead boy here. Soon people will come. We need to… take him back to the school." He paused for a second, considering what to do. "I'll call Jean."

* * *

Jean was in the middle of a geography lesson when Charles's voice entered her mind, echoing around her skull. Urgency poured from Charles's mind, and supressed fear and shock too.

Jean's eye glazed slightly, and the whiteboard pen dropped from her fingers as she raised it to write on the board.

"Miss Grey?" One of the students – his name was Will, and he had an uncanny knack for guessing things correctly – asked tentatively.

Jean sucked in a sudden sharp breath, then smiled a little distractedly. "I'm sorry," she told the class. "Professor Xavier has a meeting for me to attend. You'll be on your own for a little while, but –" an edge of sternness entered her voice, "_don't _go mental, okay? Do _not _raid the vending machine like last time."

With that, hiding her shock and the sudden chill in her bones, Jean walked calmly out of the classroom.

As soon as Jean was a few doors away, she started to run.

* * *

Jean entered the trees at the back of the field a few minutes later. She was gasping for breath, clutching a stitch in her side, tears trickling down her face.

"Jean," Charles's stiff posture seemed to relax a little. "I apologise for disrupting your class, but…"

"It's okay, Charles." Jean could sense the shock of Cain's death from everyone there, but Charles must have had a connection to him – trying to stop Cain killing himself without traumatising his mind even further – as he died. Charles had literally felt Cain die, and that kind of shock and pain lasts.

"Should we take him back inside?" Kathy refused acknowledge the smell of the boy's body, even though barely anything had changed from the smell of a living body. But something was gone, something was different.

Kathy bit her lip. Her hands clenched into fists. She'd smelled the faint scent of Cain on Jay – overwhelming blood and ice, she smelled his blue eyes and his smile – but also the boy underneath the ice.

She had realised what she could smell a long time ago, though – other bodies, other strange absences.

Kathy could smell souls. That unplaceable scent that was at once part of a human and completely separate – the non-physical essence generated by the brain, a physical, tangible organ.

"Kathy?" Jay asked. "Hello? Anyone in there?" Her sarcastic, angry tone hadn't diminished. "Kathy!"

"Huh?" Kathy's head flicked around in the direction of her voice. "Sorry. I just spaced out for a sec."

Jay moved closer. Kathy could smell her now – not just her mutations, her scarred skin and mind, but the unplaceable, otherworldly scent that was entwined with her nerves and nuclei – Jay's soul.

Kathy could smell Jay's tears, the sadness pouring off her. Slowly, tentatively, not quite sure what she was doing, wrapped her arms around the taller girl.

"It's going to be okay," Kathy whispered. "Trust me."

* * *

**Sorry for the long wait, real life has been interfering. But I tried to make this chapter longer than usual, so I **_**hopefully **_**made up for it? I think?**

**Anyway, hope you enjoyed reading this!**

**Please review! **

**Katie Trillion xx**


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